Capitain Scaramouche  The League
by TWSythar
Summary: Arc 4 of CS. When a man is seen as nothing but a stereotype, how will his friends react when he no longer conforms to that stereotype? Lesgle, Feuilly, Joly and Grantaire attend an ABC meeting and discover where the line between man and myth is drawn.
1. Friend of the Rueful Countenance

**A/N Arc Four! We're not finished writing this up yet, but we're far enough through (it's quite a bit longer than the previous ones and they really do get longer and longer from here on in) that I feel happy starting the updates again. If you haven't already done so, I recommend reading Into the Fire, To Right This Wrong, and Scurrilous Phantom before reading this story as otherwise not much is going to make sense. The chapter titles are taken from Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, being like all our chapter title sources one of the inspirations for this series. Please do review and let us know what you think. There's little external drama in this Arc, being mostly focused on Les Amis - but Arc Five has enough external drama for both of them, so enjoy!**

**Sythar and TW.  
**

Mes Amis - I do not know what to say.

Lucien Courfeyrac was at a loss. He walked down the steps from Joly and Lesgle's apartment, stopped, turned and looked back up in time to see Lesgle cheerfully shutting the door behind him, calling something over his shoulder to Feuilly. And... there it goes... watch for it... there. Shut. As in on him. As in with him on the other side.

Lucien ran a hand through his hair, well, well... and well. That was an interesting thing, wasn't it mes amis? Amis? Hm. Perceval, is it? Perceval. Well. Would have been nice to know that a while ago, M. Scaramouche. He considered things from one side and then the other and came to the conclusion that he had never really seen the other side of a door - not when he himself had not been perfectly and extremely ready to leave, or every other party had already left or passed out... Funny thing, a door.

Funny thing all round.

He was - utterly and completely - unsure what to think, so he turned his steps towards Dominic's house, trying to rearrange the mess he'd made to his curls as he went. _Madre di Dios_.

As usual, Bahorel - being the overly trusting soul he was (or possibly just being completely certain he could take anyone who decided to walk in if he didn't want them to be there) had left the door open, so Lucien slipped in and headed for the small, messy living area. "You home, Amigo?"

"Yeah... in here."

"Hey..." he located him sprawled across a couch which had seen many many better years and at least three better patchings, looking through a paper and chewing on the end of a twig. Where had the twig come from? Who knows. "I just went past Joly's and..." See... Grantaire's out of prison - and he's holed up with the charmingly unromantic and unfashionable twins - _and_ they've got Poland with them and appear to be playing house. Kettles and boiled eggs and bread and butter and all.

"You too?" Dominic didn't look up from the paper, his lips forming a thin thin line around the twig.

Uh... "You know then?" If you know, mon cher cher cher amigo, dearest drinking buddy and friend among friends - why didn't you tell me? _Warn_ me, maybe.

"Yes. I know."

Not promising, that. Lucien dusted a portion of the only other safe chair in the room and sat down, trying to find the cheerful side of the story. Cheerful - huh - oh yeah, Grantaire's not going to hang anymore. That's good. Honestly, mes amis, that preyed on my mind a lot, that did. More than my classes and more than my mother's injunctions to put dried lavender in my drawers... "Oh. So at least he's out, right?"

"Oh, yeah, s'pose so."

"...and he's being pretty nice about the whole thing." Like - eh - the whole 'we walked out on you and inadvertently caused you to go off and get arrested through a ridiculous series of mishaps' thing.

"Mhm." Dominic turned a page in the paper and looked unimpressed. Either Charles X was doing something incredibly fascinating or his fears were founded. He had simply ceased being visible and audible. How _else_ could all his cher amis be ignoring his sense, and style and wit and cleverness and fashionable dress...

Don't you start on me, Dominic Bahorel. "Right. Are _you_ going to not talk to me now too?"

With that, the paper dropped and he received a slightly apologetic shake of the head. "Oh no, of course not, ami..."

Uh huh. Not that I'd usually ask such a silly thing, of course, but there's this sneaking feeling you get when you watch four grown men talk at the speed of a galloping horse without pausing to take breath and let you have a word in edgewise. "I'm not suddenly invisible, am I?"

"Funny," Dominic drawled. "I'd thought _I_ was."

Oh. Lucien laughed a little and grinned and neither felt exactly cheerful and happy. "You too, huh?"

"I'll say." A snort. Yes, amigo, that just about sums it up all around.

Lucien stretched out his legs and sighed. "They just... it's like I didn't even _count_." So many far more important things for them to be talking about. Oh yes. Yes, amis, I really have aboslutely _no_ idea what that particular little shared joke referenced and thank you _so_ much for making me feel so included. Really.

"Like you were suddenly part of the furniture?" Dominic looked about as pleased as he felt, face twisted into something of a scowl as he picked away at a gaping hole in his couch's overcoat. Now, amigo - if she were a grisette, she'd slap your face for that sharp as you please.. but seeing as she's the belle old grande dame she is - you may escape unscathed. Maybe.

"At least a piece of furniture would have been useful."

"That's true." Dominic laughed rather bitterly, and Lucien felt a little better to know he wasn't the only one being treated as though he were Very Nice Really But Not Quite Old Enough To Participate In The Games. Pah. I _wrote_ the games.

And then there was the _other_ thing about it. He picked at his teeth with a hat pin that he'd found in his pocket - _whose_ was that pin? - and gave Dominic a little side-long glance. Stop me if you've heard this before, amigo... "You know, I thought _we_ were supposed to be his friends."

"So did I... so did I. It's crazy."

"...dam' if I know why I'm even letting it get to me, though," he added, putting the hat pin back. _Cecile? Suzette? Helene?_

Dominic growled a little and shrugged his shoulders. "Why wouldn't it get to you? It's a bitch."

Yes, amigo, thank you for putting that so succinctly. "Well... it's not like I should mind th' crazy bastard has got a few more amis now." No, no. Dammit, I don't mind. He can become friends with all of Paris if he likes - more power to 'im, I say. Let the world be friends and let the femmes be happy and let there be love for all. For a moment he almost managed to feel happy about things.

Bahorel - curse him for a cheap bastard who wore his winter coat in _summer_ - spoiled that smartly and with his usual finesse. "It's not that he's got a few more amis. It's that he's got them instead of us."

That was it exactly. Au'voir contentment. You were here such a very short time... "Yeah, and after all that trouble we went to getting Combeferre to talk to Enjolras about him, too."

"You'd think he could be a little more grateful," Dominic added, rather sulkily.

"Yeah - not act like I'm a damn enfant who doesn't know anything..." Lucien rubbed at a patch on his trousers and frowned very hard. "Hell didn't he ask _us_ to help him out instead of Joly and L'aigle and even Feuilly?"

That, amigos, had been the nail in the coffin, the icing on the cake, and the guillotine in the middle of the soiree - eh? Even _Feuilly_, whom Grantaire hadn't even _liked_ until days ago.

"Yeah. Really." Dominic was in agreement, and Lucien couldn't help but wonder if this would get sorted any easier than he was going to get that particular red-wine stain out of his new ivory coloured cravat.


	2. What a Fool! Oh! What a Fool!

**A/N - So, the chapter is short, I felt like updating again... and I thought... Why not? Here y'go people. As I'm going to be away all weekend, the update is a bit early. :) Hope you enjoy, leave us a review!**

"You'd have thought we would _honestly_ have been better choices. Dieu," Lucien swore lightly. And Dominic Bahorel agreed. When you go to decide between your own good amis and a few fellows you happen to've met through a society you're technically not even a part of, and you choose th'other hommes…_well_…

He kind of had the nagging feeling, though, that he was being maybe a little hard on Grantaire. "He knows he can count on us for lots of things."

"Doesn't look like he knows that," Luc countered.

"Yeah…true," Dom said; yeah, you had to admit that it was pretty damn ungrateful to ignore them when they wanted to help.

"He _did_ look pretty messed up," Luc said, frowning as though he'd read Dominic's mind.

"He looked _awful_," Dominic growled. He may not have understood what Combeferre was getting at, but he knew an injury when he saw it. If only on account of giving and receiving so many himself. "If I ever get my hands on the bastard that did it…"

"You and me both," Courfeyrac nodded. Bahorel's vivid mental image of whoever-the-hell-had-done-that in a similar bloody mess was interrupted by a sigh from Lucien. "I'm still having trouble with Maurice... and his sudden _musketeer_ attitude."

Dominic sat up a little and snapped his fingers. "_Exactly_." Yes, that was it exactly. All for one, and one for all, and don't interfere with us four and our special little club, will you? "What's up with that?"

"Dieu damn me if I know!" Luc said. "He positively bit my head off when I popped around this morning and told me that he didn't appreciate people just dropping in all the time and would I mind not getting mud on the carpet and not to wake Daniel _or_ 'Perceval' whoever the hell that is."

"Biting people's heads off?" Dom raised an eyebrow. "That's not like him at all." Mud on the carpet, though? Definitely Jollly.

Luc shook his head and then looked up at Dominic thoughtfully. "…amigo…who the _hell_ is Perceval?"

Dominic suddenly realized he'd never heard the name, not in any kind of way that could make sense. "I'm…I have no idea."

"Yeah," Lucien snapped, "that's what I said. And then Maurice kindly and rather sarcastically told me it was GrandR."

Bahorel was still having trouble getting past 'sarcastically', despite having been on the receiving end of it once already. But…wait…had Luc really said…? "GrandR?"

"Yeah," Luc spat bitterly. "Apparently we've been friends with the homme for all of coming up two years now, and he's told them his name in a week."

_Perceval_? Perceval Grantaire. Dominic Bahorel could safely say he had never heard that name before in its entirety – ever. Not even in their drunkest moments of raising hell. And within a week…he felt himself feeling a bit less guilty about this whole mess. "Are they just all on first-name terms for good now? Because they were _definitely_ using them when I was there."

"Oh oui," Lucien grimaced. "How many times have I told him to call me Lucien?"

"I stopped counting after the first fifteen or so."

"What was wrong with _us_, then?" Luc said.

"That's exactly what I'd like to know."

Luc snorted a bit and leaned back in his chair, messing with a hatpin. "Makes me wonder why we tried."

Dom folded his paper up and tossed it aside altogether. "Pretty worthless venture if you ask me."

"Yeah, well catch me trying anymore," Luc scowled. "I know when _I'm_ not wanted, eh? B'sides, all he did was drink my money away and tell me my girls look like this or that muse."

"I hear you - always used to say the same thing whenever I had a girl." Which wasn't often, but what were they good for anyway? Near as bad as Grantaire himself.

Lucien sounded more and more frustrated by the _word_. "Couldn't he dam' well get a girl of his own?"

Dominic snorted. "Too much work, I imagine."

"True." Luc paused and then sighed. "Just down to me and you, then, is it?"

He grimaced a little. "That's what it looks like."

Luc's face suddenly broke into a smile – that was the Luc Courfeyrac he was used to. "Well, at least _you_ won't scare Suzette with your bawdy tales of Zeus."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

And that was that, eh? If we don't exist to them, there's no point in their existing to us.


	3. The Superiority Of This Wisdom

**A/N - Sorry for the late update. Family matters delayed me. Here is a nice long one for you all, and as a note - please do check out Revolutions - Great And Small by our dear friend storytellers if you're not reading it already. Beautiful and wonderful and so many other things that defy adjectives!**

What is the singeing sensation, mes amis? That would be one Harlequin - Joli - cher cher Maurice, glaring a hole in my skull for coming out to the meeting. And Daniel helping him because damned if he is going to let his Joli have all the fun. Eh? What's that you say? You, mon cher, are a very fine coffee cup with much very fine coffee in you and I'm going to keep on drinking your very fine coffee for as long as I'm able because it's better than drinking all the - very very very fine wine lying around.

Does wine lie?

In vino veritas, they say.

Oh, and might I just say? Broken ribs? Unmercifully strict hosts? Just utterly _darling_ when suddenly forced out of the brazen luscious arms of drink. Grantaire had thought it was bad in the cell, occasionally even distracting him from the careful recitation of facts in his command, even more occasionally distracting him from the pain in his chest - just with that awful, awful hunger. The need to drink. God how he'd needed it.

He'd felt it before once or twice, when he woke up some days and looked at the mess he was lying in and the face in the mirror and wondered whether he had enough putain self respect left to fill a thimble. It always went the same way. He would pour out his absinthe into a gutter, or sell it to the neighbours, or toss it at a passing cat. Hours would pass. He would think 'Hah. So there, M. Enjolras I Think I know So Much Better Than You, I _CAN_ stay sober!'

His hands would start shaking. He would feel cold and hot in turns. His stomach... pain... _need_... and then he was down the road, consumed with only one thoughts - to find something to drink. It had happened enough times to be the single most depressing moment of his life, repeated over and over. When he sat with the bottle, gulping until the red ran down his chin and stained his shirts - when he saw the looks on the faces around him... when he felt sick to his stomach, relieved and ashamed... and knew that _this_ was what he was. Just like Enjolras said...

Awful.

No, the only way to break free, apparently, was to get arrested. Not just for anything, for breaking people out of La Force. _Then, _and are you taking notes? _then_, make sure a right bastard breaks all your ribs. And you should note it's very handy to have about three friends willing to risk life and limb to get you out of the bastard's clutches once he's managed this. After all that, just take up residence on the sofa of a pair of charming but totally unsympathetic twins. Who might possibly threaten to tie you down and gag you should you start asking for absinthe at three in the morning again.

Who might just possibly have to hold you down anyway.

But the ribs help, awfully distracting, they are.

It had been a week now. No more sly slipping away from Harlequin, M. Scaramouche just off to arrange the freedom of certain students and la if there doesn't happen to be a wineshop on the way, now isn't that handy? No more pretending not to be hungover in the mornings... no. Actually sober and it putain hurt, but the point was he was _actually sober._ That counted for something. Don't you think, cher coffee cup?

And here we are at another of Enjolras' Secret And Very Important Meetings On Why Charles X Is An Idiot and Everyone Would Be Happier If We All Had His Money (that was what it seemed to boil down to, sometimes). Alexandre, Daniel and Maurice were wearing sour, 'we don't think you should be out of _bed_, Perceval. Why are you out of _bed_, Perceval' expressions, while Prouvaire seemed bewildered by their presence _together_, and Bahorel and Courfeyrac...

Bahorel? Courfeyrac?

Grantaire blinked in their direction. For some reason known only to himself, Bahorel was glaring. Outright 'I'll punch you in the face quick as look at you' glaring. At... whom? Easy, mes amis. At moi. Me. Scaramouche and Papa and Grantaire. Me. Courfeyrac was equally cold, but disinterested, playing with a hat pin and giving off an ever so elegant air of sheer, complete obliviousness to their presence. What the hell?

Enjolras made a glorious entrance, a bit late - but like a late sunrise, no less majestic.

"...hello, Enjolras." Combeferre was there with his notes and his papers and his cup of coffee, looking for all the world like a faithful retainer who might bite.

Enjolras nodded at him and sat down. "Hello, Combeferre. I'm sorry I'm late... I was in class." He looked a little smug about that, as though he were trying to say in the most godlike way possible - hah. I _can_ go to class on my own. So _there._

Since he appeared to take pride in being as infuriatingly unreactive as possible, Combeferre just smiled pleasantly. Grantaire could have sworn he did it on purpose. Just used his scary doctor skills to read your mind and find out what you _wanted_ to hear, and say something opposite.

"I hope no one did anything without me," Enjolras sounded quite unusually pleased with the world. Dieu knew it was better than the alternative - _much_ better, merci - but it was a little strange. Classes and bonhomie and here I am wondering if I've wandered into the wrong cafe. Hullo - this is the Cafe In Which Amis Act Bizarrely Like Balzac Started Writing Them - I want my cafe with the austere Enjolras and the friendly Bahorel and Courfeyrac back.

"We were, of course, waiting for you to arrive," Combeferre said, in his best lieutenant voice.

"Thank you." The blue eyes gazed out over the assembly and blinked and - oh Dieu, Apollo... please don't say you're going to pay me any attention... but _no_, Apollo isn't taking requests from worshippers of Bacchus right now, apparently. "...why is Grantaire here?"

Combeferre's expression hardened a little. "He just came. I didn't realise he wasn't meant to be here."

In a moment almost as miraculous as the enchanted milkjug courtesy of Hermes and Zeus, _Combeferre_ raised his terrifying chilly eyebrow at _Enjolras_ in defense of a slightly broken ex-drunk sitting in the front row.

"No, I mean... shouldn't he be in bed or something?"

I know you lot think I'm a few Robespierres short of whopping the head off all and sundry, but you do realise I am - as it were - in the room. In listening distance. Right here and hopefully not yet wasted away to pockets with holes in them?

Combeferre seemed as oblivious to this fact as Enjolras, merely frowning a little. "He really should. Apparently his zeal outdoes his good sense."

And in the one sentence you've indicated a belief I have both. Dangerous, ami. Dangerous. That's like indicating a belief in the possibility you might beat Courfeyrac at whist. It's plausible... but unlikely. As in - I would bet my shirt on him if this weren't almost the only one I have.

"...zeal is good," Enjolras said almost approvingly, nodding his head and ignoring the coffee Combeferre was trying to push his way. "Where would we be if we had more sense than zeal, Combeferre?"

Combeferre gave him a dry dry look. One which, unfortunately, made Grantaire thirsty. "In class, Enjolras."

"Your zeal needs work." Wait... were his lips twitching?

Before Combeferre could continue the little repartee, Daniel leaned forwards and growled very softly, his bald brows contracted in something of a mix of anger and annoyance. "Zeal is bad. Bed is good. Bed, Perceval. You hear me?" His Joli nodded seriously to back him up.

I hear you, ami. I hear you. It's dieu awful strange hearing you say my name, though. Grantaire thought it was something like wearing a very very old pair of shoes. Ones that had served him well in his youth and then been left in the attic to get a covering of dust and a company of spiders.

"I think I have sufficient quantity," Combeferre was saying, a smile hovering on his lips as well.

"Perhaps." A moment's pause. "The real question is whether Grantaire has really developed some."

Daniel and Maurice were still glaring at him with Every Intention Of Having Papa Scaramouche Answer Them With An Affirmative, so he grinned and shook his head. "Oh, don't spoil my fun now, Daniel. I am becoming a topic of great merit and discussion."

"Well he _is_ here," Combeferre said with a tone of amusement.

"You have a great talent for stating the obvious."

"It is one of my finer points," Combeferre shot back with a raised eyebrow. "How was class? How is your paper going?" The subject was masterfully changed, and Grantaire found his attention captured once again by his three amis.

Daniel was leaning forwards, arms folded, glancing to Maurice and Alexandre for help in his endeavors to 'dammit, get Perceval to agree he's human, will you?' except politer. And with laughter. And tripping over _while_ sitting down - a wonderful talent.

"Perceval," Maurice said quite firmly, something which you get used to eventually, honest. "Health is more important than fun. You can experience fun vicariously, but it is much harder to do so with your health." With this enormously Joly speech, he nodded to the others and they nodded back.

Mon dieu, amis. How do you do _that_ and still manage to be _totally_ serious? "Fine. I swear on my grandmother's head that I'll not get upset and I'll leave if trouble starts and I'll stay in bed for weeks and weeks."

There was an ill-disguised - hell, he didn't even _try_ to disguise it - snort from their right, and Grantaire looked up to see Courfeyrac and Bahorel glaring once more in their direction. Damned. Utterly _damned_ if I know what's bitten you two, amis.

"Class..." Enjolras said vaguely, again with that small almost smile. "It was... well... classy."

Combeferre smiled back. "Weren't you meant to be writing on the Decree of... when was it? December 4th?"

Now there was one of the things Grantaire particularly disliked about these meetings. Despite himself, he could _feel_ his ears prick up. He could _feel_ that rush of knowledge building up clear and sharp and fast. I know this, something was saying at the back of his mind - some young projections of Perceval The Young Fool who still existed way back there where everything he once knew was hidden. Shh. Shut up. Go away. I don't want to remember.

But he did.

"Yes. Yes it was," Enjolras said, seeming less than interested. Young Perceval thought this was little less than a crime. Grantaire wished Young Perceval would shut his stupid trap.

And because neither God - who, oh dammit yes he exists but don't you tell Prouvaire that I said so or I will throttle you - or all the p'tit anges were going to take his prayers seriously, Combeferre was inclined to be _chatty_. "I didn't go to enough classes on it. What's the point of the essay?"

"Oh, I'm just supposed to be writing on its effects on the departmental administrations..." Enjolras said, rather vaguely - as though he were placating an over-eager child with a sweet. "...they were pretty much all abolished and they weren't reinstated until they made the new Constitution in the year V."

Young Perceval won. "No, the year III." He said. Out Loud. "They were reduced to Directories, and though they lost a lot of importance, they were still present."

_Merde_. He'd spent a lot of effort and time hiding his scholarly accomplishments from Les Amis. A lot of time. All putain _ruined_ because some stupid naive schoolboy of his younger self who didn't understand life at all wouldn't be able to accept that mistakes are all right and let Enjolras find it out when the lecturer marks his paper...

Merde!


	4. The Most Outrageous Luck

**A/N A little early, I know... but I'm pretty busy over the weekend and I can't guarantee I'd be able to update, so here we go. Do remember to review if you do happen to stop by, merci! It does make our day. :)**

This…was not good. _Couldn't_ be good. Not at all. Assuming Perceval was right and Enjolras was wrong, that just made it even _worse._ Maurice could tell that Daniel agreed from the timbre of the breath he'd just taken. Even Alexandre had broken his general impassivity to look concerned.

"…I'm sorry, did you say something?" Enjolras said, turning his head slowly toward Perceval.

Perceval looked uncertain about carrying on but also as if he just couldn't _help_ himself, the same look Joly had sometimes seen him give a glass of absinthe. "The departmental administrations... they were reinstated in the year III after the fall of Robespierre."

"You're certain of that," Enjolras said, and blinked slowly at Grantaire as if he just couldn't comprehend what he saw and heard.

"I got a 20 on my paper," Perceval bristled. "I'm very certain."

The silence that descended on the room was so sudden as to almost collapse in on itself. Even Maurice was stunned. _Perceval Grantaire_, a _20_? When his own greatest success had been a painstakingly researched, nervous-breakdown-inducing 17 and even Combeferre by his most fervent efforts had scraped 19 but once…the skeptic Grantaire, in a paper on _politics_ – on _revolution_, no less – had received a _perfect score_?

As the silence in the room gathered claustrophobically, he could see Combeferre's brow darkening further and Feuilly's concern heightening while Perceval remained defiant, even – was that indignance in his face? Maurice Joly could feel his stomach quivering dangerously and he was vaguely aware of worry breaking out on Daniel's face, the kind of worry that lately meant "Someone find the coffee quick because Joli's going to need it." Oh cher, I don't know where it is…I don't_…_oh, backpedal, Perceval – just back down and hope Enjolras lets you live, if Combeferre doesn't kill you first for throwing your education away after you beat him at academics…

The only one of them with the strength to push off the heavy mantle of silence was Enjolras, naturally. "…I see," he said finally, lightly, as if it didn't matter to him at all either way. "Of course."

"…just trying to be helpful, Enjolras," Perceval said quietly, but the indignance and defiance were, worryingly, both still there.

"I'm glad you're making an effort," Enjolras said, with something of condescension in his voice. Maurice started wondering whether Daniel was right about the coffee.

Combeferre slowly leveled a familiar acid gaze at Perceval. "I didn't know you were a student of law, Grantaire."

"I'm not, Combeferre," he replied shortly. "Not anymore. I dropped out."

_Oh dieu_. Wrong words to say around Combeferre, ami. Wrong words. The fearsome eyes behind those equally fearsome glasses narrowed in definite annoyance. "…_why_ would you do _that_?" Combeferre said in a voice that said he was giving him the benefit of the doubt – but in name only. "Do you have _any_ idea how important an education _is_?" The glower he was getting from Perceval – Perceval, ami, why are you _glowering_ at Combeferre, that isn't how you get him to leave you alone, you get him to leave you alone by taking notes, agreeing you'll get better, and promising to try as hard as ever you can next time – only made him more annoyed. "It should be against the law of the country to waste your potential like that, Grantaire."

Up until this point Enjolras had been ignoring the familiar Stay In School For Your Country lecture, but something in this last sentence caught his attention. "Indeed it should," he interjected, drawing looks of approval from his second. "Why isn't it already?"

Grantaire tried a sour sort of attempt at a smile – oh _Perceval_…"Well... there would be far fewer students free. Think of the implications for Bahorel alone!"

"Leave me out of this," Bahorel growled abruptly. What the _hell_, Dominic? A week ago you and Perceval were forgiven and forgotten and best of friends. What's come over you?

Perceval seemed equally taken aback. "…sorry, I'm sure."

Enjolras ignored the diversion and instead responded directly to Combeferre. "True. It seems it would be in the favor of the government to outlaw that, as there would be far fewer revolutionaries."

"...that's true. It is interesting that they have not had the foresight to prepare against that." Combeferre was no longer paying any attention to Grantaire either.

"Then again, foresight is not something one associates with them," Enjolras replied.

Maurice looked uncertainly around their circle. Was he interpreting this correctly? As angry as they had just been, Enjolras and Combeferre had just successfully been distracted from what were certainly their respective pet peeves? Did it have something to do with how unusually friendly they were being with each other? And _dieu_, what was up with Dominic and Lucien? Not to mention Perceval. Maybe his ribs were truly getting to him. Maybe he was fevered, to take on both Combeferre and Enjolras at once. Maybe Combeferre and Enjolras were mad, to let such an event fall without comment. Maybe – maybe he and Daniel and Alexandre had simply wandered into the wrong meeting with the wrong Grantaire, the wrong Combeferre, the wrong Bahorel and Courfeyrac, the wrong _Enjolras_ for sure…and now that he thought about it, Prouvaire had been awfully quiet today…

He shuddered and bit his lip and tried not to look as worried and confused as he felt. How exactly had Perceval just escaped being eviscerated alive, and how long would this stroke of odd good fortune last?


	5. I Bid My Brother Goodbye

**A/N So here we are again, one more chapter in and I'm sure you're all beginning to notice how the dynamics are shifting here. Well, keep reading! There's plenty more to come. All our love to all our readers and hope you're still enjoying the story. **

Hello, dieu - bon jour. It's Daniel here. You might remember me, eh? Look, dieu, I'm not very picky and life's really pretty good lately and all that... I'm very happy living with Maurice, and Perceval and Alex are the best of hommes, really. Well, once you get used to th' one and his attraction to vile green liquids and th' other's tendency to start talking about fraternity and Poland at the drop of a hat... when I say _you_, I don't mean _you_, of course since you already know everything and...

I'm rambling, aren't I?

Anyway, I was just wanting to say, Dieu, ah - please. I don't complain often but... if you're planning on shocking me like that, could you give me a little warning next time? _Grantaire_ and _university_ and _20_ are three words I was really _really_ not expecting to hear strung together in a coherent and sober sentence... and _then_ for both Combeferre and Enjolras to just let it slide... _really_, mon dieu - are you trying to give me a heart attack?

Daniel sat very still, almost afraid that if he was to breathe too suddenly, the relatively peaceful outcome to Perceval's strange sudden Discovery of His Backbone While In Enjolras' Presence might melt away. Perceval was _stil__l_ acting surprisingly unrepentant. Ami... you all but _snapped_ at Enjolras. And Combeferre. And you lived. Please please simply be grateful for the miracle and the fact that none of us are gawking at you in sheer disbelief.

"They ignore the fire," Combeferre was saying calmly. "Until it burns down their houses beneath them." They were full flow, bouncing back and forth with metaphors as though there _weren't_ a 20-grade student ex-drunk sitting in their midst.

20? He... _he_... was hard-pressed to get more than 12. On a _good_ day. 20. Really. _Really?_ How?

Enjolras nodded. "So they do. And it shall engulf them in flame."

"All it needs is a spark." Combeferre replied. Yes... yes, it looked certainly like no one was paying any more attention to Perceval. Including, by the way, his very own 'before us, ami' friends. Dominic and Lucien had been glaring at their table for the past twenty minutes, like perhaps there was something _really_ bothering them.

Daniel couldn't tell what might be bugging M. I'm The Best At Fighting Don't Annoy Me and M. Look At How Well I Tie My Cravats, 'specially as they had seemed so pleased to see that Perceval was alive and not-about-to-be-hanged-any-time-soon. If _anyone_ had a right to be annoyed here, _surely_ it was Perceval. Not, of course, that Daniel was taking sides in their little argument... no. Certainly not as though he were being at _all_ judgmental of people who let their friends walk off into danger and possible death and then glare at them for no possibly known reason besides ... maybe... the fact that he himself had punched one of them in the jaw at one point...

Perceval kindly cut through that particular train of thought with a sudden help, and he looked over sharply to see his ami curl one arm around his ribs, face screwing up a bit - oh _Perceval_ - we _told_ you that you weren't _ready_ to get out of bed...

"Grantaire, be quiet." Enjolras barely looked away from the conversation he was now holding at a quieter level with Combeferre. It was, no doubt, an instinctive response. A We People Who Actually Count Are Busy, response. A response that Daniel did not currently have any patience for.

"Pardonnez-moi..." poor Perceval gasped, and yelped again, trying obviously to stifle himself and _not_ succeeding at all. Of course. Of course you're not you idiot genius. You stupid stupid brilliant ex-drunk. There's a _thing_ about broken ribs where _sucking in your breath_ hurts _really_ bad! Gah.

One of these days - if I had hair - you would turn it silver.

"Mhm," Enjolras looked up and around and seemed to be brought back to business and the fact that Yes We Are All Here Waiting For You To Tell Us What To Do. "I suppose we ought to start the meeting?"

Combeferre nodded. "Of course."

Sooner the better. Then we can get Perceval out of here before his newly discovered courage in Enjolras' presence leads him to offer to lead a charge or something equally ridiculous. Daniel got ready to take notes. He didn't always read over them again, but he found them a useful thing to have in case he should forget something important.

He also suspected Maurice burned them when he wasn't looking.

"Hey, ami..." it was a whisper from Perceval, his chin propped in his hand to disguise the fact that he was talking without leave and while teacher was speaking. "Mind going over and asking Bahorel if he'd come over here? I can't go wandering over to him because you'd bite my head off."

Ah, so it's not just me, then. I was beginning to wonder, ami. You've noticed it too, and you're going to do something about it, and that's fine. "Dam' straight I would." He got up and walked carefully around to Dominic and Lucien's table, _carefully_ carefully - and even managed not to trip over a single single thing. "Hey... Dominic, ami..."

"What?" Dominic spun in his chair and leveled a furiously angry glare at him. Like a 'one step closer and I'll punch you in the face and fix all your teeth problems forever' look.

Dieu - what did I say about shocks? Daniel felt his heart skip two beats and his feet tangle together and nearly fell over into a heap. "...hey... what've I done?" Was it the punch? _Ami_, really? Oh ami, don't tell me you're all mad at me because I punched you. It's not even showing anymore... I don't think i could _possibly_ have done it very hard and it's not like I can apologise for it because you really deserved it and... _ami_...

"Well, just now you've finally noticed I exist again," Dominic snapped.

There did not appear to be any logical answer to that... and logical reason for that... or any... _dieu_ any _illogical_ one. "Uh... what?" A truly intellectual answer, Daniel. That will impress upon him the importance of explaining his unusual behavior right away.

"I note, ami," Lucien drawled, picking at his teeth with a hatpin, "that _you_ are the only one who appears to have started to exist again. I am still quite invisible."

It didn't stop there. God save them all, it didn't stop. Daniel struggled with a sinking feeling in his gut and the unnerving sensation that his eyes were bugging out of his skull, and just listened in dumbfounded silence. "It must be one of those rare lucky days. Maybe we're just going to take turns being visible."

Lucien nodded. "That must be it, amigo. Quick, while you're visible remind L'aigle he owes you ten sous."

"Oh, L'Aigle, you owe me ten sous."

"Um." He did, there was no two ways about it. He'd borrowed ten sous to cover the tab of a meal they'd shared together and insisted he'd pay them back. And he had ten sous in his pocket - just ten, that was all. Only ten until Wednesday. Ten. Daniel felt for it, pulled it out and put it on the table with a rueful sort of smile. Oh well. I owed you, so... "All right. Grantaire was wondering if you'd mind coming over to talk to him?"

The air had been chilly before and now it felt as though a snowman could move in and live in perfect harmony. "...oh, hell if I'm moving one _inch_ for that bastard," Dominic snapped.

"What?" Daniel gaped. Bastard? Perceval? As in _Scaramouche_ Perceval? _Our_ Perceval? Bastard?

"Didn't you hear me? Or am I going to be inaudible too?"

Dom... _Dom_... it's _me_, Daniel? L'aigle? The Eagle? Your _ami_? Your drinking buddy and fellow card player? We sat up all night once together simply because it seemed like a good idea and we wanted a reason not to go to class? What... what did I _do?_ "Dieu, ami, what the hell is the matter?"

"Obviously inaudible," Lucien said coolly, in his patented drawl that he always used on people he didn't like at all.

"Must be," and now Dominic wasn't even looking at him, arms folded and head turned away. "No use trying to get through to him."

Oh. Well.

Daniel looked from ... Courfeyrac... to Bahorel... and shook his head slowly. Oh. I see. All right, then. I... guess that's pretty obvious. He turned and walked back to Maurice and Alexandre and poor Perceval and sat down, looking at his hands and trying to understand what had just happened.

"Are you all right?" Maurice put a hand on his arm comfortingly.

"I... they..." oh dieu, cher, how do I explain it? Even to _you_, cher! "he didn't want to come. Something's wrong, but he wouldn't tell me what."

Alexandre looked thoughtful. It was a common expression on his face, like the way Perceval always seemed to be in the middle of telling a bad joke at the world's expense. "Figures."

"_What_ figures?" does everyone understand this except me? "I don't get it."

Alexandre just raised his eyebrows. "No, figures that they wouldn't tell _us_."

Perceval looked worried and tried to wave Bahorel and Courfeyrac over, wincing a little as the movement jarred his ribs. Naturally, they didn't respond. Naturally they were completely ignoring their wounded best friend. Naturally. "Right," he said finally. "I'll go see what's up."

"Hell if you will!" Daniel sat up straight. Not with _those_ ribs, and you tell me exactly why _you_ should have to take a single _step_ for those ungrateful connards, Perceval Grantaire...

Maurice - bless him for having sense - frowned. "You're not even supposed to be out of _bed_, Perceval."

"I can walk a few paces." Perceval got up and went grey to the lips, his hand gripping the back of his seat very tightly. "...just a ... just a _few_... I'll be back."

Daniel exchanged a worried look with Joli. What did Perceval have to be so damned noble about these things? Just let them rot, ami. They'd do the same to you. But no, Perceval moved slowly over to their table and offered something of a smile - oh, and that's nice, you can hear everything from over here. Which means Perceval heard Bahorel call him a bastard and he's still going...

Ami, you have your priorities in the wrong places, has anyone ever told you that?

"Hey... what's up?" Perceval, lightly - like nothing is wrong. And nothing was what he got in return. They didn't even both to talk to him, both Bahorel and Courfeyrac simply proceeding to ignore that such a man as Perceval Grantaire 20 Student existed.

After a few moments, Perceval leant on the back of a chair a bit more heavily than was quite casual. "...what've I done _now_?" Daniel could see he was grinning. Not his 'Excuse me while I pull yet another rabbit out of my hat' grin, or his dry cynical grin, but his vaguely self-conscious 'I know I'm drunk and loud, but hey... you'll talk to me anyway won't you?' grin that had in the past convinced Daniel to actually converse with him even before they'd been friends.

"Hey ami," Bahorel said pointedly to Courfeyrac. "Do you hear something?"

Courfeyrac shrugged. "Not at all, amigo. You see anything?'

"Absolutely nothing."

This was just... painful. Painful and cruel and dammit couldn't they see how much he was hurting just trying to talk to them at all? "Perceval..." Daniel called out. "Dieu, just come back and sit down before you dam' well fall over."

"I think my ears have started ringing. What about you, Lucien?" Bahorel rubbed one side of his head overly dramatically.

"Awf'ly. Wish they would stop."

And with that, even Perceval was defeated. He shrugged his shoulders a little as though to say 'All right then, I don't care...' and walked back just as slowly as he's walked over. Enjolras had luckily ignored the entire altercation, being embroiled in a detailed conversation with Combeferre about the properties of gunpowder and the possible suppliers. Once he'd sat back down, Daniel could see that Perceval was really... _truly_ upset by all this. Dieu... there's that ... oh _dieu_, not the dog with cancer eyes... oh... _no_...

He glanced to Maurice. Cher... fix him, please? But no, no, Joli was nursing a cold and looking utterly bewildered - while Alexandre was wrapped up in what appeared - from the set of his mouth - to be Very Serious Thoughts. "Hey... Perceval..." my job, oh dieu, I'll break something... "Would you be willing to help me with my assignments? I'm really struggling with the Theory of Legal Change lectures."

Like magic, Perceval brightened a little and sat up straighter. It seemed he'd once been almost... wait, he got a 20... _more_ fervent than Combeferre about his studies. Wonder what happened to you, Perceval ami? What made you quit all that potential and let the wine shrivel up all your hope? "Oh... sure! Sure!" He sounded almost grateful to be given the chance to help. "Of course I'd be glad to. I hear they actually use one of my papers as part of the readings for that class."

"Oh really?" Maurice leaned forwards and nodded encouragingly. "Which one?"

"I think it was 'Fallacies of Revolution."

Grantaire didn't seem to realise what he'd said, but... _Dieu. _I've _read_ that... dear _god_, Perceval - if you wrote that what the hell are you doing _here?_


	6. To Shut Out The Piercing Sun

**A/N - And this is a little short, I know, but we may update again soon with the other short chapter - or simply double update on Tuesday. Though we've still got quite a lot to work through before we reach the end of what we've written, just so everyone knows - both of us are going through some rather busy and stressful times at the moment and we might fall behind on updates somewhat. Maybe. **

**Enjoy!  
**

Augustin Enjolras had _wondered_ when the final piece of this puzzle was going to fall into place. One of the best-known methods of procuring an automatic higher grade was to argue in favor of the establishment; the professors, knowing quite well from whence their salary came, had a vested interest in advancing those students in support of the establishment and holding back those students coming out against it. It was one of the reasons his own papers kept doing poorly, and a frequent target of Combeferre's criticism. While Enjolras much agreed that the schools should not be turned into breeding grounds for bourgeois complacency, he did not quite agree with the sentiment that education was the keystone of the arch of Progress. Look, for example, at Grantaire, M. L'Vingt Student himself, who had just openly admitted to authoring the well-known and well-hated paper that was "Fallacies of Revolution".

"_Fallacies_ of Revolution," Enjolras repeated after Grantaire, turning from Combeferre to cast a glance back and make sure he had heard correctly. Given the looks on the faces around Grantaire, he had.

Combeferre, the distracted one for once – ha! – looked up from his lists and locations. "I _remember_ that paper…"

"Do you really, Combeferre?" he said with an evenness that came satisfyingly naturally. "What was it about, may I ask?"

"Surely you read it," Combeferre replied, cocking an eyebrow, " it's part of your class on Theory of Legal Change. Not the nicest paper I've ever read. Author took the time to attack every revolutionary mind of the last century and claimed revolution brought no positive changes to the world."

Ah yes. That was what he had thought. "No, I never read it. Seemed a _waste of time and ink_ if you ask me." He could see Grantaire flinch at this.

"…I was very _young_, Enjolras," he said quietly.

Combeferre blinked, startled, and then anger came over his face. "_You_ wrote it?"

"So it would seem," Enjolras said coolly.

Combeferre flared up, as Enjolras had expected he would. "Then what the hell are you doing _here_?"

Hadn't he told him Grantaire was good for nothing and bad for quite a lot? How many times had they discussed the drunkard and skeptic, and how many times had Combeferre insisted they give him the benefit of the doubt? Gentlemen of the jury – Courfeyrac, Prouvaire, Feuilly, Bahorel, Lesgle, Joly, and especially _you_, M. Eugene Je-Sais-Tout Combeferre – Augustin Enjolras rests his case.

"Look, I'm sorry. I was very young and very naive. I hardly still _believe _those ideals," Grantaire tried to say weakly. Combeferre merely folded his arms and continued to look down on him in righteous anger, while Lesgle looked rather shaken and Courfeyrac and Bahorel gave each other questioning looks.

"So. Grantaire," Enjolras began quite calmly, looking over to the other man, " as you are the author of this...illustrious...tract, would you care to explain its points for me, M. le "20" student?"

Grantaire shrank backwards in his seat, face reddening. "...I'd rather not..."

"Oh, come. We so rarely hold conversations of any import, surely it would be a crime to refuse this one."

"Well…" Grantaire took a rather deep breath and a slow look around the room before yielding. "...it starts with a selection of arguments against Babeuf, Cambon, d'Eglantine, Lindet, Marat, and Robespierre..."

"No small project, I daresay," Enjolras commented while processing all this very quickly.

"Outlines theories of the Third Estate, Voltaire's philosophies and Rousseau. Argues little social change was truly effected, and more harm than good was done." Grantaire paused a little and winced here. "...also poses the opinion that no further attempts should be made by self-proclaimed voices of the people to change the course of history lest they simply murder all those with them."

"Self-proclaimed?" Enjolras' voice rang out, coldly, in disgust. Another oft-repeated injunction: The leaders of this movement have no power but that which is given them by their supporters and that which they take from their oppressors. _He_ was not the one using the name Apollo, after all, Grantaire.


	7. If I Have Done Wrong I Withdraw Myself

**A/N Upon checking we found that only half this chapter had been loaded, so have edited that. :) Sorry!**

This entire scenario was the most confusing mess of new information that Alexandre Feuilly had processed since he'd correctly identified Scaramouche with Perceval in the first place. Being totally unfamiliar with the system of education, that is to say anything more formal than a few borrowed textbooks and one battered Latin dictionary, he was working entirely off of the expressions of those around him. None of these were particularly good: Maurice and Daniel had been exchanging looks of mingled shock and worry for the last ten minutes at least, and Combeferre had looked, well, not a little outraged. Not to mention poor Perceval himself, who should _not_ have come at all and had gone from confident to completely deflated in a much shorter period of time than was good for a man. Feuilly didn't know anything about the paper in question, but given its description it was no wonder Enjolras was up in arms. But Combeferre? Surely he ought to know better, having been there just last week and discovered that their long-outcast satellite really did have sentiments against injustice, and actions against it as well.

Speaking of Perceval.

"What can I _say_, Enjolras?" he was attempting to stutter out, shrugging his typical shrug but without the grin, only the emptiness underneath.

"Nothing you obviously haven't already said," Enjolras replied icily. Combeferre was still angry and still agreeing with him, given his irritated 'tch' and insulted look. Courfeyrac and Bahorel and 'Jehan' Prouvaire looked equally insulted. Prouvaire, now, he could understand; the boy took Enjolras as his role model in everything. But the others? God, but what was stopping them remembering properly?

"…it was a very long time ago," Perceval said, truly pleading now.

Combeferre merely stared down in disapproval. "One should always be prepared to stand by one's convictions, notwithstanding how old they are."

"...really?" Grantaire said, suddenly springing back to life, seemingly pushed too far. "Has every man here never held an opinion in his younger days which he later comes to regret?" Daniel, Maurice, and Alexandre exchanged worried looks around their table. He was going to _really_ get killed this time if he weren't careful.

Rather than answering himself, Combeferre raised a chilly eyebrow and directed the honors to Enjolras with a nod, who accepted them in kind. "I rather doubt any of us have ever gone to such extremes, assuming of course that you have repented of them - as I have so often noted, you have shown no signs whatsoever of having done so."

"Dieu," Perceval snorted (whether or not he was right, this wasn't doing much to make them feel better about his chances for survival). "If I were still of those opinions, I would hardly be here."

"Really. Is that so." Enjolras had his coldest, hardest glare focused on poor Perceval.

He saw intimidation sweep across Grantaire's face briefly before it was replaced by the sort of sheer bravery Scaramouche favored. "...yes. That's so."

"Care to present me with any evidence?" Enjolras looked as if he were in court already (he was a student of le droit, wasn't he?), bearing down hard on a guilty criminal.

"Of what? My change of heart? My 'repentance'?" Perceval said, his tone suddenly turning bitter. "My life story?"

There was something in the bitter turn of his voice that caught at Alexandre. He wasn't any kind of sentimental, but…he could well imagine the sort of ups and downs that might have made even a '20' student (whatever that was) drop his courses and turn to the company of empty drink and emptier theatrics. Was the growth of such a man like gradually adding dye to water, or more like adding new coats of plaster to a wall? Was Scaramouche a mask, or was the real mask Grantaire – that is to say, which one of them might be best shown by peeling the plaster away? Or perhaps…was there another man further beneath who used both layers of plaster interchangeably as protect –

"Let's save the life story for another time," Enjolras said, voice slicing neatly through Feuilly's thoughts. "Just tell me what you've done for the Cause to let me know you're serious."


	8. His Usual Flow Of Argument

**A/N - Et voila, a slightly longer chapter. Welcome to our newest readers and/or reviewers Atoile and Bakura From School! :) Thanks for dropping in to let us know how you like CS, we always like hearing from everyone! I hope this chapter clears up a little of Combeferre's rather harsh reaction to Grantaire.**

_Fallacies of Revolution_. If there was one thing more completely irresponsible, more godless and sinful and unforgivable than wrecking the true talent of a good intellect on the rocks of booze and laziness - it was deliberately tearing down and destroying the faith and beliefs of those more dedicated and useful. Combeferre had read the paper and found it a frighteningly logical work of art - cruel, almost, in its efficient destruction of the values he held dear and the men he had admired since childhood. So much conservative, concentrated enmity was in the paper, that he had imagined the writer as a professor dedicated to the regime and steeped in the outdated traditions and hypocritical morality of the times.

He had seen men he himself had been on the way towards converting to the cause read that paper and lose their faith completely. It was like a cancer, stealing dreams and squashing the life out of those who read it. Even he had been a little - somewhat shaken. And here he was. The mastermind behind it... the creator of havoc in Eden. Their own fallen angel and whispering serpent.

And what was he? A landed bourgeous with roots in the aristocracy? A bitter professor? No. None but their very own thorn and drunkard. Their paragon of disbelief trying to undermine those around him with his poisonous words. A vingt student, apparently - better than any of Combeferre's own efforts had managed - so damn clever and so damn wasted. Dieu. Combeferre had often considered Grantaire a nuisance, but worthy of the benefit of the doubt. Mercy, while a principle mainly to be found in the royalist pages of the Bible, had its merits in every day living as well.

No, merci. Not to a snake and a liar and a thief. True, Grantaire. You have stolen the hearts of the young out of their chests with your words. Were you to repent every day of your life, you would not undo the harm you have done. Nor can you atone for it, not with a hundred _thousand_ fancy ridiculous masks.

Combeferre felt a slight prick of discomfort when Enjolras demanded to know what Grantaire the Unbeliever had done for the Cause. Oh, he's done something all right. More than one something. He's proved there could have been a good, true man in him if you could get it out of the wine long enough to dry off. But, no, Augustin. Honestly, Augustin. I do not think there is a single, honest, individual moment in which he has atoned for the utter devastation he has wreaked.

A quick glance around the room showed how things were divided. Bahorel and Courfeyrac were both surprisingly disinterested in their carousing ami's fall from depths to depths, while his new companions, the surprising M. Harlequin and his followers Lesgle and Feuilly looked uncomfortable and worried. Look to your _Scaramouche_, my friends and comrades. Look at him and his beliefs and see how they mock your own. Prouvaire was stoutly on Enjolras' side, which was unsurprising, given how much the youth idolised their leader.

"...what...I've done for the cause..." Grantaire was saying, hesitantly.

Enjolras gave him a cool look, unimpressed and calmly playing the drunkard enough rope to hang himself. "Yes, it's very simple."

Typically, M. Vingt Student drew back and gave his trademark cynical je ne sais pas grimace of a grin. "Why, Apollo. Don't you know? You tell me all the time."

"Do I? What is that?"

Combeferre was prepared for some sort of ill-advised, sardonic, lackadaisacal response, and he was not at all surprised. Grantaire's grin tightened at the edges, and he practically sneered, "...absolutely nothing. Sometimes also 'worthless' or 'nuisance'." Too frightened or too lazy to make the effort to tell Enjolras the truth, is it? Or perhaps like some of us you too doubt whether that really changes anything about you, Grantaire.

Enjolras turned to Combeferre, one eyebrow slightly raised, and drawled coolly, "Ah, he does listen."

"...so it would appear." He listens and he watches and he mocks. It was easy to see where the ingrained cynicism that shot down all of their dreams and plans came from now. Combeferre glanced briefly at Grantaire's table and saw that Lesgle was giving both he and Enjolras a particularly heated look...

Hmm. No, it was more directed at himself. Open your eyes, Lesgle. I'm hardly going to bend over backwards for your two-sous hero when he houses the mind that concocted such infamous vitriol. Let him sink or swim on his own.

"What penance should I perform, Apollo, for having a foolish naive youth?" Grantaire asked dryly.

It was little secret that Enjolras disliked Grantaire's attempts to liken him to the golden deity of the sun. Combeferre understood it as a abhorrence of anything so close to idolisation in which stood the root of all class distinctions and segregation. To place one man above another was heresy... _ah_... but here we have our vingt student. Surely we _must_ be wrong. Enjolras' eyebrows drew together sharply for a moment. "Tell me, Winecask, is this the forty-ninth or the fiftieth time I've asked you not to call me that?"

Rather surprisingly, Grantaire answered without a pause, "Forty-ninth, Enjolras."

Apparently one of them had been counting.

'That's what I thought," Enjolras said coldly in his best 'damn the authorities' voice. "I must have said the other one out of your hearing."

Grantaire looked up, paused a moment, and then said very quietly, "Please don't call me winecask."

Combeferre was startled by that. Never had Grantaire ever expressed a preference on what anyone called him before. Be it R, GrandR, Dionysus, Bachus or winecask, he answered to all with a laugh and a shout of 'more wine over here!' and seemed just plain happy to get the attention.

"Yes," Enjolras was continuing as though nothing had happened. "That's what must have happened."

"Obviously," Grantaire bit out, his face darkening, _obviously_ unhappy at being ignored.

Enjolras bit right back. "Capable of rational thought! You never cease to amaze me."

"Oh don't forget, Enjolras," Combeferre put in, eyebrows raised in Grantaire's direction. "He's a vingt student."

"Oh, I'd quite forgotten, how silly of me. A vingt student in opposing the Revolution. How very talented of him." In many ways this was one area in which Enjolras shone perhaps more than in many of his other areas of great talent. He was a brilliant debater, and skilled at finding and targeting the weak areas in an opponent's defense. He was relaxed in his chair, almost drawling his responses as though he didn't particularly care about the outcome. And every word was going straight to its mark. It was rather artistic, really.

Combeferre pursed his lips. "And then a drop out. Even more talented, wouldn't you say?"

"Consummately so," Enjolras agreed, nodding appreciatively in response.

Grantaire's face had been slowly darkening as they talked, and finally he snapped, eyes actually managing to summon something like a flash. Perhaps the spawn of a very very small absinthe flavored thunder cloud. Brewing a hangover, no doubt. "I'd appreciate it, _gentlemen,_ if you'd stop harping about that little _gem_."

"And we would appreciate it," Enjolras snapped back, sitting up tall and straight and majestic, his voice icy. "it you'd stop poking your nose in where you aren't wanted."

Yes, Grantaire. Stop picking at our beliefs and poking at our hopes and destroying our dreams. Go drink your own faith and potential away somewhere else. We certainly have no possible need for you here.

There was a small inkling at the back of his brain where such inconveniant things were often kept that perhaps - _perhaps_ - such anger was a little misplaced in the odd and misshappen mixture of good and ill that was Perceval Grantaire. Combeferre was in no mood to listen to small inklings. Not now.


	9. To Sit Still And Watch These Two Men

**A/N Sorry for the late updates my dears, I've been moving and everything in the world is in chaos at the moment! Here are two updates because I owe you one. :) Many thanks for your reviews, and if our reviewers would like to submit a request for a short piece for Christmas, we will take them into consideration. **

The dissention over Grantaire and Revolution was still raging.

"For Dieu's _sake_," Perceval fumed, "I'm not even drinking! You're angry at me because I wrote a dam' paper when I was _20_! Seven _years_ ago!"

Alexandre started a bit at the number, almost as much as Combeferre at the outburst itself. Grantaire was _younger_ than he was? Feuilly hadn't bothered with his birthdays in years (no one else had either, so there wasn't a point), but he knew he was coming up on twenty-eight in the summer. He'd always assumed Grantaire was at least thirty, given what the cares of life had done to his mien and well-creased face and what drink had done to his voice. One of these days he was going to have to learn to stop making assumptions about Perceval Grantaire. By the looks of things, so did Enjolras.

Their leader only looked on the erstwhile drunkard all the colder for his sudden resistance. "Seven years ago I was making my first plans to escape from the treacherous heights of privilege and seek truth in its natural habitat."

Joly's forehead creased in concern as Grantaire's creased in pain from the effort of sitting up a little straighter. "…what is it like," he said deadly drily, wrapping one arm firmly about his ribs for support, "around we _natives_, Enjolras?"

"So far rather disappointing," Enjolras shot back in a perfect deadpan. "I've found much to hope in, but there is one man in particular who seems to have made it his mission to shoot down those same hopes."

Perceval did not retreat, but a look of hurt came into his eyes. So he'd realized what Enjolras was talking about, too. "Oh? What is it about this 'man' that is so _hopeless_?"

"Oh, he happens to believe quite firmly that there is no good in man, and yet he persists in keeping company with those who believe precisely the opposite," Enjolras said very matter-of-factly, as if he and Combeferre were discussing some other man who was currently residing in another district of the city, or possibly no longer living at all. The sudden switch from his earlier, more direct approach struck Alexandre as outstandingly insulting. "He rather drags us down, you know."

"Perhaps he is trying to change," Grantaire said softly after an injured pause – injured, but looking more like a dog kicked by its master than like a man struck by an enemy.

A lesser man would have sneered, but Enjolras merely persisted with his logical tone – ah, that's where Combeferre's calm air went, eh? "How could a cynic accept and create change except for the worse?" he said.

"Maybe he's found some men worth believing in," Perceval answered, and took a quick and cautious look around their little table as if to say _you don't mind my believing in you, do you? Seeing as Apollo does._ Maurice gave him a very uncertain sort of encouraging look, while Daniel leaned over to press his shoulder with a little flush and a smile and Alexandre gave what he hoped was an encouraging sort of look. He wasn't very used to this.

"I doubt that," Enjolras said steadfastly. Heh, Enjolras, you're just jealous. If such a thing's possible.

Perceval's tone turned soft again, but fierce. "...when a man's got someone worth dying for, that's one step. When he's got someone worth living for, that's a league."

"One would hope to live for some_thing_ rather than some_one_."

"..I'll take what progress I can," Grantaire said, with a slight, confident jerk of his chin.

Enjolras continued their rhetorical fencing-match easily. "The defense of Liberty demands that each man give his best."

"I'd give you my best if you'd just _ask_ it of me!" Perceval said, breaking out of the rhythm with a peculiarly Grantaire-like meeting of pride and despair. "Let me prove my loyalty, Enjolras. Give me something... give me _anything_ to do my best _on_."

"_You_?" Enjolras snapped. "What can you do? In every instance you consistently let your country down. You make nothing of yourself and you make a mockery of our society and our aims."

Perceval suddenly looked as if he were faltering in the face of Enjolras and Combeferre beginning to act like themselves again instead of each other. "Try me," he said after swallowing and taking a steadying breath.

"I see no need to. You have already been tried and the evidence lies before us," Enjolras said coldly.

"…that was _years_ ago," Grantaire said pleadingly. "Give me a _chance_, Enjolras. Ask me for _anything_." Feuilly personally thought, a bit darkly, that he shouldn't be quite so free with that phrase; after all, the _last_ thing Enjolras had asked of him was to go and _kill_ himself.

"Anything, Grantaire?" Enjolras said, growing fiercer and colder and more intense by the minute. "Anything?"

"Anything!"

Enjolras' eyes suddenly blazed up like those of an ancient god ready to crush the foolish mortals below. "Get out and don't show your useless drunken face in here again."

"Augustin…" Combeferre said finally, very quietly, seeming to become more and more like his usual cautious self.

"…please…" Grantaire whispered, also retreating into his usual role at a frightening pace.

Enjolras swept one arm across to touch Combeferre's shoulder in a command for silence, not taking his eyes off of Grantaire. "That is all I have to say on the matter."

Grantaire cringed, even paler now. "…have mercy…Apollo." Oh _Christ_. If there was one thing Enjolras hated…oh, Perceval…

"You appeal to Apollo," Enjolras rang out across the room, coldly. "Apollo is nothing but a dead block of marble carved in the likeness of a flight of fancy. Until you are prepared to deal with living realities, myself included, then you are not welcome here."

Perceval forced himself up even though the pain from his ribs showed – we _told _you to stay in _bed_ damn it – and swayed a little, clutching the back of his chair for support. "…is there hope for me, Enjolras?"

"I am not an oracle."

"…can I ever come back?" he said, putting one arm back around his still-broken ribs.

"_Augustin_…" Combeferre said, still softly but more forcefully than before.

Enjolras ignored Combeferre. "That is a matter for the future."

Perceval started to turn but hesitated. "…I…"

"I have asked you to do something very simple," Enjolras said levelly. "Leave us in peace."

"I'm sorry," Perceval said, stumbling a little but catching himself. Alexandre wondered why he didn't either sit back down or go somewhere where he _could_. He looked as if he were still hoping for some kind of mercy from Enjolras. Under an even more focused glare from Enjolras, though, he finally turned and slowly made his way out of the room.

Over at Courfeyrac and Bahorel's table, Courfeyrac finally seemed to be feeling a little remorse, but Bahorel was stubbornly having none of his overtures to sympathy for Perceval. Combeferre, also, had graduated to directing his signature over-the-glasses glare at the side of Enjolras' head. It was about _time_ those two, at least, had remembered what Grantaire had actually done for them all. Alexandre looked over at Daniel and nodded toward the door inquiringly. As Enjolras started back in with a discussion of whose contacts had anything to report at the moment, Daniel cast an unfriendly look in his direction before turning back and shrugging a bit as if to say, _what can we do, really?_ Alexandre was still debating whether he should get up and follow Perceval or not, not knowing how he would take it, when Maurice quietly got up and slipped out the back.

Feuilly couldn't even begin to concentrate on the business at hand. It seemed like recently, every new experience just left him with more and more questions to be answered – more things he couldn't fathom the whats and whys and hows of. Like what was Courfeyrac and Bahorel's problem, why hadn't Combeferre tried to stop Enjolras from going after Grantaire, and how were they _ever _going to convince Perceval that he was better at being a human being than he _thought _he was?


	10. Alone Among Those Present

**And here's the second update. Hope you're all well!**

The sheer foolishness of the act of putting one putain foot in front of the other while standing up straight and being half convinced that one man - one worm and slug to the mighty and the great and the good - one singular and particular Grantaire was at any moment quite in danger of stopping to do something so utterly un-Scaramouche-like as to weep faded as he stepped out of the cafe. There was a small area for the outcasts and pariahs of social circles to gather and drink their coffees in peace, pretending each man to have very important Parisian business to attend to elsewhere, which was why he was being so _very_ unFrench as to be on his own with a singular seat in the chill of the early Spring air.

The man and worm and whatever else he was, the outcast and the lost soul, the forbidden and banished Grantaire and winecask settled slowly into one of these chairs for his breed of man and hugged both arms around his ribs. He was too tired to be anyone new or splendid, anyone who could prove to Enjolras that this single, mortal, fallible, broken thing of a human being was worth any more than the wreck Enjolras could see. He was nothing except the approximation of the man behind the man who was called Grantaire. An old and tired and very very cracked and fractured man. Perceval.

Dieu, my ribs hurt. The thought was going around and around his head. Never ceasing, just the endless circle of pain. Pain pain pain, and _dieu_, amis... what a fool I am. _Dieu_ amis, what a waste I am. _Dieu_, amis... let me have a drink, amis... my ribs hurt and I can't breathe.

"Perceval?"

It was still hard to realise that Maurice was talking to him when he said that, so Grantaire took a few minutes to look up, and then winced at the worried look on Joli's face. Ah. Yes. Merci, mon cher Harlequin. Here to check on your ami Scaramouche, are you? Well, I'm sorry, Harlequin. There's no one here but a useless old sot who lost all his faith more years back than he can remember. Look at me, Harlequin - attacker of the Cause and damned soul... damned lost soul... Harlequin, there's nothing here for you. "...made a fool of myself, didn't I?"

Maurice sat down and shook his head. "No, no. Enjolras did, not you." A pause, and Grantaire could see the unfortunate possibilities of that statement running through Joly's particularly nervous but certainly agile brain. "I mean... made a fool of himself, not made a fool of you - you know?"

I'm sorry, cher ami, are you asking me to state for the record that I think Enjolras made a fool of himself? Really? "He's... very... passionate." Dieu, he's everything I'm not. Can't you see that, Harlequin? Do you need your glasses checked over? Can't you see just how passionate and true and fine and god-like he is? Like a white fire fit and set to clean out the world if we worms and cynics believed the world could be cleaned.

"Well, yes. One can't help but give him that," Maurice said, then proceeding to perform a rather awkward and obvious subject change. "How're your ribs?"

My ribs? My soul? My _heart_, mon ami? Why do you bother a dying man with questions to his health? Not that I _am_ dying, of course, but _dieu_, I wish I were. He leant forwards and rested his head against the table. "...feels like demons are raking them with tiny little pitchforks. Fiery pitchforks. Hurts to breathe."

"Hey," stout and brave Daniel slipped out of the cafe to join the outcasts beyond the world of the Cafe and forestalled Maurice's fretting.

If only for a little bit, for there... yes, now he's _looking_ at us with those damn eyes and... "Oh that's not good at all," he says, and _thank_ you. Now I can't even point out the _yes,_ M. Joli, kind M. Joli, I _did_ know that it's not good because you've gone and turned those eyeson me and I can't!

Possibly a good thing that, eh mes amis? After all, god knows I've made enough enemies for one day. I'd like to keep the few friends I've got left, though heaven and the blue skies and all the pretty little birds only know why you still want me.

"Ribs playing up, are they?" Daniel sat down - miraculously not tripping over anything and gave a kind sort of grin. "I told you not to come."

"You shouldn't be up and out of bed at all..." Maurice added. And yes, they'd said not to come. Each of them had said not to come. Even Alexandre had repeated it rather bluntly several times with an exasperated look on his face.

Well, fine. I give up. You were right. He gave a groan and nodded against the table. "Agreed... didn't do much good, did it?"

Am I dragging you down too, amis?

"Not at all," for a moment he thought Maurice was somehow through strange and freakish gemini powers answering his thoughts before he could even consider speaking them aloud, but then he realised it made more actual logical sense that Maurice was simply replying to the words he had actually spoken out loud. Never let it be said that we are constrained by the laws of logic, my very very dear table. Not when illogic is so much more comforting. Maybe that's why Combeferre is so angry with me. It seemed more than likely that Combeferre could just tell when someone was going to think something like 'illogic is more comforting' and was prepared to smite them beforehand with the power of his fearsome glare and _dieu_, I'm not even making any sense in my own _head_, am I? Maurice was biting his lip and looking worried. "Daniel, how are we even going to get him back to the apartment now?"

"I'd call a cab, but Dom took my last ten sous."

With which we get the double blow of being reminded how _putain_ poor we are and what a _putain _burden that is for you lads and get to think about Bahorel as well. Bahorel and Courfeyrac and what the hell I've done to _them_ recently because I can't think of a damn thing, mes amis... not recently anyway.

"I didn't even think you had that much in your pocket," Maurice said rather indignantly. "You shouldn't have paid him!"

"I owed him. He asked... couldn't say no." Daniel said it quite simply, as if that concept of paying back a debt when asked was the most obvious thing in the world.

Maybe it was. It was also the most obvious thing in the world, wasn't it chers? M. Grantaire's just no good to Bahorel and Courfeyrac when he's sober and serious. He's just no use to them anymore when he's not their own personal clown. "...looks like I'm no use to them anymore, doesn't it." His voice came out cold and blank, and a bit too soft, for neither Maurice nor Daniel seemed to notice.

Joli was arguing the point with his twin. "You could have considered it a tax on his being such an ass..." and here progressed a sort of concerted searching of pockets and turning out of wallets and scratching of heads before Daniel sighed and Maurice made a disgruntled noise. "I don't know if I have enough either."

"I can _tax_ people for being asses?" Daniel asked with a grin, putting his threadbare wallet back in his pocket. "Damn. I'll make a fortune out of Enjolras alone!"

Maurice gave a surprised laugh. "Yeah..." and then he looked in the man Grantaire's direction. "Don't listen to what he says about being useless, really..."

Merci, ami. That will make all the difference in the world that will. Just tell me not to pay _Enjolras_ any heed, eh? That will work. He tried on a smile and felt it wilt at the edges. "I'll try. He's always so sure of himself. Dam' convincing." Y'hear him, ami? I'm the disappointing man. The one who holds you all back from the paradise he leads you to.

"That's the truth," Maurice said with a sigh, once again seeming to answer thoughts - except not so reassuringly this time.

"...well... I'd ask 'Ferre for help, but he's obviously lost all sense today as well. Whole dam' world's gone mad." Daniel said, leaning back in his chair and sticking his hands in his pockets with the air of a man ready to wahc his hands of the entire human race. His Joli, of course, nodded along in agreement, and here we are, mes amis. Gathered outside the hallowed grounds of the Republic and having our own little revolution against the powers that be. Enjolras really _should_ be proud.

"Well," he said softly, Scaramouche amused and the man Grantaire simply tired of being full of irony all the time. Irony - despite how hard you could laugh if there was enough **wine** and your ribs weren't **broken** - hurt. "Dominic owes _me_ money. Maybe I should ask _him_ for it."

It was something of a joke, that. Something of a 'hey, he wont' even talk to me, how much money do you think I could get out of him' joke, but Maurice grinned like it was the best idea he'd heard in a while. "Oh, that'll go over well."

"Hey... that would be rather amusing, Perceval," Daniel gave a laugh.

Maurice folded his arms. "I'd like to see him try to say no."

"Be a bit hard to in front of me, now, wouldn't it?"

It was amazing how they could do that. This smooth conversation like they had grown up talking like this and would always talk like this. Like they knew what the other was going to say before the words had left their mouths, and were simply continuing the thought for their twin 'in case you'd forgotten to think this, ami'... Grantaire the man and Scaramouche the father and all the fractured pieces of Perceval in between, watched in amazement and awe.

"Especially..." and a beatific grin spread over Maurice's face. "Since he still hasn't lost that bruise. I don't think I ever told you how amazing that was."

"It was nothing, cher." Daniel went red, and Grantaire took a moment to recall... oh yes. Someone had mentioned at some point that M. Pedrolino had punched one M. Bahorel on the chin. And yes, a fine, fine bruise, monant

Fine enough to bring a grin to his own face, albeit a small one. "Oh yes, I heard about that. Good for you, Pedrolino."

"Don't seel yourself short like that," Maurice said firmly, petting his twin's hand. "You were wonderful."

One of these days, Grantaire thought, he was going to have to tell them that they looked like an old married couple when they did that.

"Well, he had it coming. An' if you'd have told me what it was 'Ferre said to you the other night, _he'd _have had it coming." And here Daniel Lesgle flexed muscles which he obviously had, but just as obviously no one else had suspected he did.

Maurice grinned. "It wasn't really all that terrible."

"If you say so."

"Tell the truth, I really don't remember what it was. I hope I didn't say anything too terrible back."

Considering the caustic, hyperactive, strangley buzzing mood Maurice had been in, Grantaire somewhat doubted that the enigmatic Eugene Combeferre had managed to escape without being bitten by the sharp-toothed lamb.

A chuckle from Daniel confirmed that he wasn't the only one who suspected so. "Well... he looked remarkably chastened when he came out. Don't tell me you forgot getting an apology from _Eugene_, ami."

"Unfortunately, I think I may have done just that. Maybe I'll get lucky and he'll have occasion to apologize again, but when I'm properly conscious."

Maurice chuckled then, and Grantaire was filled with the almost comforting notion that maybe he wasn't the only one out of the three of them who sometimes felt like there wasn't a single person int the world who took him seriously. Though... oui, it would be nice to have a twin like Daniel... but...

Somehow this wasn't quite as lonely as before.


	11. Some Degree of Comfort

**A/N - Thank you to all our reviewers for you Holiday wishes and please remember those of you who haven't requested one yet, we're taking Christmas requests. I can't promise they'll be written in time for Christmas (I tend to write presents and I have a very very long list this year!) but they will be written and either posted up here or sent straight to you in a PM depending on whether they are canonically accurate. :)**

**Have a lovely holiday, and we will probably update another few times before Christmas itself, so see you soon.**

**Oh... and my apologies in advance for any French argot or informal modes of expression that are not clarified. Please do remind me to translate anything you don't understand as I sometimes just plain forget.  
**

It looked as though Algiers was currently important enough that no one had missed Maurice and Daniel leaving. Alexandre looked around the room to see that, as usual, no one was paying any particular attention to him, either. Get well known enough for one thing, he had decided, and when you're not fitting into that preconceived idea, well, no one bothers paying attention to you. It certainly fit well with Courfeyrac and Bahorel's new attitudes toward Perceval, and what the hell was up with _that_? They had their full attention turned on Combeferre and his report now, as everyone else did. Not even a scrap of pity. Beasts.

…Oh come _on_ now, Feuilly, you can't let yourself keep on growing cold and bitter like this – it'll stick, and you'll get old and forget how to love _anything_. Think of the good man, the honest man, the kindly women and laughing children of this world. Think of the way Jehan cheers on those struggling little flowers as they emerge from the ravages of spring's very last frost. Think of the people whose troubles may be seen reflected thus, in so sparse and crude a flower-bed as the Parisian roadside. Think of valor. Honor. Sacrifice.

Which of course led him back to Perceval. Quietly and carefully he got up from his seat and slipped out the door to find Perceval, Maurice, and Daniel gathered outside. They were saying something to each other about apologies.

"Y'know I'd say I'd like to get an apology one day from Enjolras..." Grantaire was sighing, "but I'm pretty sure the universe would implode."

"It wouldn't necessarily," Maurice said unconvincingly.

"Mhm… can you see it, though?"

Obviously neither Daniel nor Maurice could, though both seemed to be trying their hardest to look as if they did. Perceval turned, and Alexandre saw the look on his face. Tired, and sore, and wounded, and very much wishing this would all go away. He let go of the door and didn't bother to catch it as it slammed shut. What the _hell_ did he care that the others thought, assuming they should even notice, since they'd just kicked Grantaire out so cruelly?

"It wouldn't implode," he said, starting forward and dragging out a chair for himself. "We might start getting snow in August, though."

"...snow in August... now that would be a sight to see." Perceval was smiling very weakly at the thought, and Daniel nodding along encouragingly at the sight. Anything to make Perceval smile and that worried look leave Maurice's face, he guessed.

"You know what else would be a sight to see?" Feuilly said as he sat down and folded his arms. "Bahorel and Courfeyrac after I get my hands on them."

Grantaire looked defeated. "I don't know what's up with them."

Daniel just shrugged and looked to his twin. "I don't know either."

"Neither do I," Maurice sighed. "Any clue?"

"Seemed they put a lot of emphasis on 'noticing they existed'...?" Daniel said, much to Perceval's apparent confusion.

"Well," Alexandre said slowly, chipping away at a broken fingernail, "I think there was a point behind their sarcastically ignoring us, but I don't seem to remember our ever ignoring _them_…"

"... I remember talking to _both_ of them last time they came around…" Perceval said, shaking his head just as slowly. And he had, rather extensively, in fact, given his condition. Alexandre'd been there when Maurice had finally just chased Bahorel out one afternoon. The preceding conversation could _hardly_ be considered compatible with anyone ignoring them. Not if there was any sort of logic involved.

They ought perhaps to be careful speaking of devils. Here they were. Both Bahorel and Courfeyrac looked perfectly poised to simply stride on by and ignore every one of them, despite their taking up quite enough space to block most of the street access.

"…hey," Perceval said warily, "Bahorel…" The other man simply continued ignoring them, causing Daniel to throw a pronounced glare in his direction. It was the sort of glare generally reserved for people who were laughing at Maurice, which boded pretty well for Perceval and pretty badly for Bahorel. "Look..." he tried again, "I just want to know if you could pay me back some of that money you owe me. Just need enough for a cab fare to get back to Joly's."

They finally stopped walking, but Courfeyrac eyed them all with some irritation, as if Perceval were some dirty street beggar. Bahorel apparently refused to even stoop low enough to address him directly. "I didn't know I owed him money."

"I hardly kept track of the games you used to play with him," Courfeyrac said coolly with a shrug.

"…If you'd do me the favor of returning five of the _twenty_ sous you owe me, Bahorel…" Perceval tried again, growing less and less assertive in the face of their rudeness. Alexandre felt himself get warmer and knew he must be glaring ferociously, but didn't care.

"You know, I'm not sure he would want my money," Bahorel said contemplatively. Only time Feuilly'd ever heard the slightest hint that he was _thinking_ come out of his mouth. "If I don't exist how can he be sure it exists either?"

"A fine question, amigo," Courfeyrac replied. "One for the philosophers of the ages, eh?" Alexandre glanced over to Daniel, who looked every bit as angry as he was, and are you thinking what I'm thinking, ami, because God knows they _deserve_ it.

Perceval groaned. "Oh hell. Never mind. I'll putain well _walk _then."

"Oh hell you will," Alexandre snapped. They'd wasted enough time on this, the man was still very much injured, after all. "Bahorel, I know you've got the money, stop playing games and give it to him."

Daniel cut in very sweetly. "_We'd_ have enough money if you hadn't just taken my last ten _sous_ after all."

Courfeyrac looked a little abashed, oh, is there a little bit of a _conscience_ hiding in there, but Bahorel just dug in his pockets leisurely. "Could have been I put the money in the pocket that's got a hole."

"...Really, amis. Forget it. I'm sure putting up with me all that time more than earnt him twenty sous," Perceval said, and started to get up before Daniel's hand shot out.

"We're. Getting. You. A. _CAB_. Perceval," he growled, looking as if he were about to hit someone if he had to. Excellent idea.

It was quite evident that this was the least comfortable turn of events Maurice could have imagined, as he seemed to have been quietly working himself into hysterics this whole time. "Perceval, sit down," he begged, "you'll hurt yourself further..."

"Dieu, Dom," Courfeyrac said with a scowl, "Just pay th' connard his money and let's go."

"Ahh, fine," Bahorel said disgustedly, and flung a few coins onto the ground in front of them. _Lovely_.

"…I don't think I want it," Perceval said, his look echoing Alexandre's sentiments.

"Just _take_ it…we need it…" Maurice said nervously.

Daniel leaned down and picked up the money, placing it firmly in his twin's shaking palm. "You take him home. I'm going to just stay and have a quick word with our _friends_ here."

"I think I'll be doing the same, Daniel, if you don't mind," Alexandre said, getting up with a nod.

"Oh be my _guest_, Alexandre."

Well then. 'Amis'. 'Gentlemen'. Whatever other false terms you'd like me to know you two by – am I allowed to say you're not much better than that rat Pilon? Because you're _not_. I want to say you're _worse_. All this time he's done nothing but try to help you, and for no reason I can see, you decide to just repay good with evil? God, I thought you were better than that. I thought humanity in general was better than that, of course, but you two as well? There's not a thing you can do that will ever make up for this if everything's the way it looks. Not to condemn you right off; you've got one chance to prove you aren't the most cruel, indifferent, flippant, ungrateful 'friends' there ever were. You had better have a damn good excuse, you connards, and you had better come up with it _fast_.

That's not a warning. It's a _threat_.


	12. Run My Sword Through Him

**A/N - Thank you all for your holiday wishes and a very Merry Christmas to all our readers. This update is early mostly as coming up to Christmas is going to be a very busy time for yours truly (I'm giving stories as gifts, so it's a lot of work - but a lot of fun too!) and I'm not sure when I'll be able to post next, so this is probably the last update until after Christmas itself. Please - Ace, Bramblefox, Mlle Patria and anyone else reading and enjoying - if you want a Christmas Story in the short series of CS related shorts we'll be uploading over the holiday, put in your request now. All requests already submitted will be uploaded around Christmas time. **

**God Bless and Merry Christmas everyone!  
**

It was funny... ha ha, no not really funny but sort of almost amusing in the terrible way life had of almost being sometimes when you were sure it was not but you didn't think it would be polite to say so. They all stood there like men from some overblown Dumas novel, waiting a chance to pull out their swords and yell something appropriately dramatic such as 'have at ye' or 'death first' or 'all for one... one for all'. They stood there together, he with Alexandre - looking, pardon mon ami but you really do, like fire and brimstone and all those other terribly uncomfortable things which the priests promised were waiting in judgment for the very very bad people when they died.

An' there across from us, ami, just across from us and standing just the same and exactly as silent are Bahorel and de Courfeyrac. Just standing and staring, Bahorel looking like he's watching a few ants milling about on a piece of fruit, and de Courfeyrac picking at his teeth as happy as you please with that damned hatpin. I don't mind telling you, mon ami, that I am going to shove that hatpin somewhere impolite soon.

Of course what made it that sort of terrible comic awful scene - that scene that looks like Moliere was weeping while he wrote it - is the cab driver jus' sort of holding his horses and staring straight ahead while poor Joli tries to get poor poor Perceval into that damn cab. Poor Perceval, who looked as though someone took a great big spoon and hollowed out his insides until there was nothing left.

Someone.

Oui.

He watched the cab start to rattle off and wondered how much the jerking motion hurt Perceval's ribs and then turned and met Alexandre's eyes. Their little Polish fanmaker (which Daniel was ashamed to admit was _exactly_ how he sometimes referred to Alexandre when he wasn't around... and sometimes... oh god... sometimes if he was in a hurry it got shortened to LPF... perhaps most embarrassingly for all of them, Maurice actually knew what he meant when he said it...) was glowing with fury, and Daniel felt a little surprised that Alexandre was taking Perceval's wounds so much deeply to heart.

True, he had been a stout asset in breaking Perceval out of prison, and he was certainly a friend... but until now he had seemed quite happy to stand on the edges of their camaraderie and observe. Not quite in, not quite out... always on the sidelines exactly how he was in Les Amis. Perhaps he had been unwilling to give them more loyalty as their little group of Men Who Are Not Sure You All Know Exactly What We Are Like As Human Beings When You're Not Thinking Of Us As Stereotypes than he gave Enjolras and the others. Fair, Alexandre was. And thoughtful.

And it seemed he had finally decided that the rest could go rot if they were going to treat Perceval like this. And damned if they weren't treating Perceval like some sort of mangy dog who needed to be kicked every once in a while to keep it away from the kitchen. Dogs. Friends. Weren't we all once friends? Wasn't life a bit simpler when we could all just drink together and talk politics and gather arms and think we might make a difference?

Funny again. It was always a bit darker and more complicated when one started actually _making_ a difference.

"_So_," Alexandre snapped furiously, looking as though he would _really_ quite happily eat a few coals if he could be certain of spitting fire at de Courfeyrac and Bahorel afterwards.

Yes. Let's get down to business gentlemen. "Just let me clear up something..." he said in a voice that sounded far too cold to be his own. He'd never really felt cold towards anyone before. Not like this cold. Not 'You Betrayed Me' cold. Certainly not 'You Kicked A Good Man In The Teeth After He Was Already Down and That Because He Tried To Help You' cold. It hurt and made his teeth ache and he was suddenly far more angry than before. "Do I owe either of you any more money?"

"Don' believe so," Bahorel said rather sullenly.

De Courfeyrac shrugged one shoulder languidly. "Not as far as I recall," with every indication in his voice that if he had recalled any he would have demanded it back already and be charging him - Daniel - interest for not being able to pay.

"That's just fine," he said quite calmly, quite a bit calmly and this isn't, amis, at all how I really feel, you understand? No. I'm not calm. No. Please have a damn good reason for whatever this is because... because to do _that_ to someone who was once your very good... hell almost your best friend... _hell_ to... _merde._ "I don't think I'll be borrowing any more from either of you in future." Which is my way of saying I don't feel you're my amis anymore. I can't borrow from you, and I ... I guess I'd still lend to you though it seems I'd be unwise to seeing as Perceval found it so damn hard to get his ten sous off you...

"Well, that's just fine with me," Bahorel said in a low drawl, raising his eyebrow as if to add 'really, what makes you think I'd lend you any?'.

Which de Courfeyrac immediately backed up. "...doubt I'd have lent it to you anyway."

Oh? Oh, I see. I see, it's like that is it? Not only is Perceval suddenly a leper by your standards, but silly old Lesgle's not worth the spit, eh? Well brilliant, mes amis. Now you're suddenly so high and mighty that you don't have to be even a little bit courteous to us poor paupers, how about you answer me just one question, eh? Just one. _Really_, that's all I want. "Either of you mind telling me exactly _what_ that _was?'_

"What _what_ was?" Bahorel asked.

Alexandre sparked a bit more and Daniel began to be afraid he would set himself on fire the way he was going. "Don't pretend you don't know."

Of course, to be frank, you're not the only one who feels like he's about to explode into a blaze of bald heads and masks and really really unwise punches, ami. "That display," he said slowly and clearly so they couldn't miss a word because _really_, Bahorel... de Courfeyrac... you _asked_. "That display of ingratitude and _cruelty_." He paused, and found that yes we _can_ get more angry if we just _think_ about it... and... "...the hell do you mean treating Perceval like that?"

Instead of looking abashed, Bahorel just sneered. "So he's _Perceval_ now, is he?"

"And you're _Daniel_, no doubt," de Courfeyrac added. "Charming, I must say. Really inspiring, isn't it amigo?"

"Oh yes. Really is."

"Last time I knew," Daniel said rather fiercely, and he could feel himself just about growling behind the words now... because _really_, I've got a lot of patience and I'll do just about anything for my friends, but right now you're on the wrong side of quite a few of my friends. "We were friends. Mind telling me what turned you two into putain bastards all of a sudden?"

That got a reaction. Both of them scowled, and Bahorel gave him his best 'I'm going to take some time breaking you in two because they're still pouring my wine and heating my stew' glare. "Say that again."

"Putain _bastards_." You got a lot less intimidating right about when I decked you, Bahorel. "What, Dominic? You can dish it out but you can't take it?"

"We're not dishing out anything but what we got in the first place - aren't we, Luc?"

This bizarre statement was followed by de Courfeyrac nodding languidly and slipping the hat pin into his pocket with an affected yawn. "In fact I don't know why we're bothering to stand here and listen to this, Dom. They're so happy in their _inspiring_ little club... let's leave them to it."

"Care to explain what the hell you're talking about?"

From the slightly startled looks on both Bahorel's and de Courfeyrac's faces, they'd pretty much forgotten Alexandre was there. Not that _he'd_ forgotten... well not completely forgotten... just sort of thought of him as in 'contemplation mode' which seemed to be broken every now and again by 'fierce attack mode'.

"You know..." de Courfeyrac was the first to recover. "I would... but I really don't think I can be bothered."

"Why?" Yes, definitely 'fierce attack mode' which we will forever pray is never aimed at us. "Think you're too good for us? Is that it?"

Wasn't that always it? Daniel gave a snort which felt like growling and broken friendships and wanting to hit someone. "Haven't you _always_? Bit too good for 'sickly little Joliiii' and 'unlucky old L'aigle' and 'drunken GrandR with all his ravings'?" Haven't you always looked down on us and kept us around because you feel better about yourselves when we're there to remind you how much worse off you could be? Oh, and _Alexandre_ too. Better than Mad Polish Feuilly, mad silly Poland and his rants and ooops, sorry M'siuer le visitor, that's just Feuilly. Ignore him.

It made him suddenly sad as well as angry, and he clenched his fists very tightly.

"Rather think it's you who're a bit too good for _us _now, isn't it?" Bahorel said in a nasty sort of voice which actually hurt, no matter how angry he was, and made him remember the times he'd seen some stupid royalist try to debate with both Bahorel and de Courfeyrac and laughed as they'd worked together in this exact flawless sort of dance of words to cut him down to size.

"Oh please, Dom," yes... that was exactly the tone of voice de Courfeyrac always used and... it really doesn't feel at all nice on the receiving end, mes amis. "Their delusions are getting quite amusing."

"_Delusions_," Alexandre said in a dangerous tone of voice, and it struck Daniel that perhaps when everyone brushes you off as 'that mad Polish homme' perhaps jibes about your sanity hit a bit too close to a rather nasty sore spot.

De Courfeyrac raised a languid sort of eyebrow and Daniel suddenly itched to hit him. "...do continue. It's not like nobodies such as Dominic and myself have anything better to do with our time."

"What else're we for?" Bahorel shook his head with fake sincerity and innocence.

"Handy background for crowd scenes, I thought."

"Oh, of course! D'you think they'll let us curl our hair and straighten up our cravats first?"

Bahorel snapped his fingers and put on a very exaggerated hopeful expression and Daniel found himself exchanging a bewildered look with Alexandre. None of this made even the least bit of sense. They hadn't ignored Bahorel and de Courfeyrac... far from it! Perceval had talked with them for hours when they visited with every sign of being really _really_ glad to see them in his slightly cynical, slightly hangdog 'damn, you came to see _me_?' way... _damn_, amis... what did we do? Where did you get this crazy idea?

De Courfeyrac gave Bahorel a ratehr nasty smile. "I do _hope_ so. Maybe if we're _very_ good they'll even let us in one of the scenes with _words_ in it."

"Oh, a _speaking_ part... I haven't had one of those in ages."

"Maybe if we ask very very nicely, Dominic."

Alexandre finally stopped it. The mockery. The awful awful mockery that seemed to just go on and on and on and forget they'd ever been friends to start with. Like they were all enemies and hated each other and _thank_ you ami for stopping it because I was about ready to scream, I was. "All right, just come out and say what your problem is before we assume you're just trying to cover up the fact that you've got no real points at all." He sounded dangerously angry, did Alexandre, their friends who possibly wasn't quite so little and was worth a thousand Bahorels and De Courfeyracs and yes even Combeferres any day.

But instead of doing the sensible thing and actually explaining themselves, de Courfeyrac just made a silly face and affected a speaking voice thinner and more nasal than his usual drawl. Thinner and higher and - you aren't mocking whom I think you're mocking are you? "What?" he asked. "You mean you haven't figured it out?"

Bahorel sniggered nastily and _yes_... that was _practically_ what Joly had said to them back before they'd managed to rescue. Daniel clenched his fists tight. I'm going to hit you in just a minute now. Just one single minute if you don't stop that right this second. I'm trying to be just, but _damn_ you do _not_ mock my Joli. Not ever. As de Courfeyrac gave Bahorel a smugly pleased look, Daniel growled, "Sounds to me like they don't have a point, Alexandre."

"That's what it sounds like to me too, Daniel," and Alexandre sounded just as mad, if that were possible. Because merde, if he hadn't been there when Maurice had said that, the voice was hard to miss... hard to miss indeed.

"Well now you've dismissed our merit," de Courfeyrac sneered. "How about you go on back to your '20' Student and leave us in peace."

"Yeah... just about the only thing he ever succeeded at if you ask me," Bahorel added.

"Call that succeeding? Making enough of an effort in his life to get some good grades only to drop out? Hah. Typical GrandR. Useless sot."

They did not just...

Not _Perceval,_ they didn't...

Alexandre shot him a quick look, somewhat horrified somewhat furious, and Daniel was sure they were both glad that Perceval had gone home and hadn't heard that. Not that. Not from his friends.

"Hah," Bahorel said. "That's true. Can't even succeed at succeeding."

Alexandre. Mon ami. Please do something fast because I think I'm going to hurt someone. It may be him, it may be me trying to hurt him... but I can't hold on much longer to my temper.


	13. The Blow Had Been Struck At Last

**A/N Well happy New Year everyone! I'm sorry it's been so long since the last update! TW and I have been so busy running backwards and forwards that we clear ran out of time to update. This is a relatively short chapter, but i plan to update again on Tuesday, so I hope it suffices. We have over half of the Christmas requests written, and they should be updating soon, so keep an eye out for them. I hope you're all well and are having lovely holidays. God bless.**

Never. Never been so furious over _anything_. Hell do you two think you're doing, Bahorel, de Courfeyrac, running roughshod over everything and everyone that doesn't quite _suit_ you. God damn you _both_, so that at least if I end up in Hell for attempting to advise the Divine, you two bastards will be there too. Utter complete _connards_. And anyway, you're just tempting _fate_ now if you're going to mock that boy in front of his twin. Not to mention tempting my fists by going on and on about Perceval like this. Your friend once. Erstwhile friend it seems. I ought to…I'm _going _to…

No. Calm down, Feuilly. Bahorel's wide and de Courfeyrac's tall and you, dear Alexandre, are neither, just rather short and not skinny but really not muscular either. Not to mention that you don't know how to fight in the least, hm? Hold it back. Do you want to end up on bed rest like Perceval? Calm down. Just calm…

"You two might want to note that," de Courfeyrac cut in. "A little advice, hmm? He's not very good at being a 'friend' either. Take it from us."

Enough tempting fate, you just _sealed_ yours. "Like I'd take advice from _you_," he growled, launching himself forward and propelling his fist very hard into de Courfeyrac's stomach (conveniently located at fist level). The connard simply collapsed in on himself while trying to guard his head instead. Idiot. Alexandre simply switched to punching him hard around the head and arms. Idiot _connard_. He didn't even bother trying to think about what he was doing, for once didn't have the time. Right left right right right and left under the chin but now he's blocking me and that would be a fist aimed at my head. He ducked it instinctively and slammed his shoulder into the midsection again. Wind knocked out so defenses down so go for the head again since that's open and now he's on the ground and wasn't that _fast_…

Beside them, Daniel had just taken Bahorel out similarly, and the mighty one was on the ground as well with an arm wrapped around his ribs. Hope that hurt. Alexandre stepped back some from de Courfeyrac, breathing hard and not really sure what'd just happened, but he didn't care. Anyway, he wasn't going to jump on him while he was down. Both de Courfeyrac and Bahorel were looking up in sheer surprise but didn't look like they were going to get up again. Wasn't like them. Cowards.

"…think they've learned their lesson yet?" he finally caught his breath enough to ask Daniel.

"_Hope_ so," Daniel growled back. "I'd hate to have to do some more damage."

De Courfeyrac touched his jaw very gingerly where he must have been hit. "Exactly what lesson are we poor peons meant to have learned?"

The answer came naturally. "That if you mess with one of us you're gonna end in messing with all of us."

"…yeah. We're a _league_," Daniel added in a growl. Surprisingly, with approval.

De Courfeyrac, oh laughing soul, rolled his eyes, and Bahorel just looked up incredulously. "A _league_."

"Yes," Daniel said threateningly. "A league, Bahorel." Alexandre nodded firmly.

"All for one and one for _all_, is it?" de Courfeyrac said rather snidely. Now it was his chin at fist level and it really was too tempting.

De Courfeyrac yelped like a dog (like the dog he was) as Feuilly drew back. "Yes. It is."

"…think of this as a warning," Daniel said, eyeing Bahorel to make sure _he_ kept his mouth shut.

"…right," Bahorel said carefully. "A warning."

"You know, Alexandre," Daniel said, "I don't think I want to waste any more time on them. Let's go make sure Perceval hasn't had a relapse."

"I think that's a good idea," Alexandre agreed.

Daniel linked arms with him and gave Bahorel and de Courfeyrac a very pointed look. "Should Perceval want the rest of his money sometime, Dominic...I'd suggest you don't make him ask twice."

"…I'll keep that in mind," Bahorel said, directing an unusually nervous look at the two of them.

The ten sous had gone with Maurice; they were going to have to walk back. Alexandre didn't really care. Right now he felt about as good as he ever had.


	14. More Congenial Friends

**A/N : Hello all. Hope you're enjoying your new year. Do check out Joyeaux Noel for more holiday themed (mostly) CS shorts. TW's Enjolras and Combeferre-centred story should be up soon.**

It wasn't so much the fact that he had been - for once - actually angry. No. Dammit, despite what certain over-stuffed bookworms with too much nose for even their books to contain and glasses far too shiny to exist, thank you very _much_ M. Le Medical Student and bon nuit, we _can_ actually get passionate about something other than fashion and pretty women. The Republic and all that is good and great therein is pretty important, isn't it? Well stuff. I love the Republic. Love her like she was my sister or something (because really, chers, I'm pretty sure not even Enjolras wants me to love the Republic like _that_...) and I'll putain knock the block off anyone who maligns my sister, or my Republic. Oui. To putain hell with the Royalists and vive la revolution. Fraternitie mes enfants, fraternitie and libertie and egalite!

No, it wasn't being angry that was creating this odd and uncomfortable wrongness in his stomach. It was being angry with a friend. Being unfriends with a friend was something that Lucien Courfeyrac had never experienced before. Sure there were the odd hommes in your life who turned out to be not so good at being good sports when you beat them at whist and steal their really delectable grisette from them, and to be sure Lucien had met one or two men who were of that unfortunate calibre. But one didn't unfriend them, they simply became less interesting and drifted out of one's ever expanding and shrinking and expanding social circle, leaving behind the really good sort of homme who didn't mind losing the price of a bottle of wine at whist or sometimes their femmes to someone with more skill in both areas.

Lucien considered a philosophy of fraternal love to be expressly mereted by most of the human race, excluding the bourgeous, Charles X, royalists, and several of his professors... considered in fact that there was not much in life that couldn't be set right with a smile and a friendly chat over a good bottle of beaujolais. If we are thinking of course of the good old '**beati pacifici**' as the priests did have a habit of saying a few times before madre gave up the fight and let pere take us fishing instead of to mass... then we even have Dieu's own blessing to it. Wouldn't Enjolras just love that?

So this sudden enmity was something which, to be quite frank, he had no idea what to do with. Grantaire had always been a slightly annoying sort of friend, who was a good enough sport with a good enough sense of humour that he could overlook the fact that he made ridiculous comparisons between Suzette and Aphrodite or Marie-Jean and Athena or Helene and some grisette who was in the shipping business. He'd been a good friend, a chum, a bosom ami who saw in more than one dawn stretched out drunk underneath some table that none of them could remember he owner of, clutching wine none of them could remember buying. And now he wasn't a friend at all. He was a bloody connard, a faker, a homme who'd hidden a bit too much from them for them to stand and sure I'm angry, I'm putain furious but what the hell do we do now?

He was still sitting on the ground where he'd ended after the very last of Feuilly's very very lucky blows, and wondering over and over what the putain de merde they were meant to do now that unfriending 'Perceval' Grantaire had somehow stretched to unfriending the little Joli, good old L'aigle and Poland as well. What do I do with this tight angry hard feeling in my gut, eh, ami? Is this how it feels to be angry at someone for more than ten minutes at a time?

Dominic looked winded, stretched out against the wall with a shocked sort of gape on his face, which turned into a more definite 'I just got beat up by _L'aigle_' look of horror. Dominic Bahorel, king of the amatuer boxers, laid out and winded by M. Le Eagle himself. Tall enough and strong enough, but no fighter - damn it, L'aigle wouldn't hurt a damn _fly_.

And moi? Little scrawny Feuilly? Poland Feuilly? He can't even _box_! "...he's got lousy style," he pointed out aloud, rubbing his jaw which was beginning to ache fiercely. "But he can punch." It seemed that it wasn't the technique that had mattered so much in this particular little soiree, but the heart. Suddenly L'aigle and Feuilly had quite a bit more heart for defening M Grantaire than he had for attacking him. Hell, _let_ the connard have his damn money if he wanted it so bad and to the devil with him. _Courfeyrac_ didn't need him any more.

"Ugh. Tell me about it," Dominic ran a hand gingerly over his mid-section and it struck Lucien that L'aigle had been placing more than one of his blows rather pointedly around Dom's ribs. Ah _hell_. Like we need illustration, Lesgle. Like we're putain _enfants_ who need that little bit of irony pointed out to us...

Merde.

"Didn't break any did he?"

"I think he wanted to. But no."

Because he didn't have the heart? Or because he couldn't manage it? Lucien wondered what he would have done if Lesgle had gone the full Jehan-Prouvaire-and-daisies poetic justice route and busted one or two of Dom's ribs. What could he do? Punch his face in? Complain to Enjolras? "Didn't really think L'aigle had it in him." He'd always seemed so damn gentle!

"Neither'd I." Dom wasn't showing any more indication of wanting to get up and move about than Lucien felt. "And Feuilly?" He gave a sigh.

Lucien echoed it. Damn, that wasn't something he'd live down any time soon. The homme was a good three heads _shorter_ than him! "I _should_ have been able to stop him. Just took me by surprise." Just went to block and heard putain Grantaire saying 'shield with the forearms and the back of your hands like this, dammit... you'll break something doing it like that' and then I got damn distracted trying to find some way to do it that didn't feel like he'd putain taught it to me!

And of course that didn't work.

Dominic didn't say anything in reply and for a while they just sat there and looked at the people passing by. And Luc wondered what one did with the feeling that unfriending four friends at once created.


	15. A Clever Man Would Have Other Interests

**A/N - Read 'Revolutions - Great and Small' by storytellers if you aren't already. My apologies to everyone who has reviewed/PMed recently and recieved no reply. I have been busy with family, birthdays and holidays and so forth. Also, my apologies for the late update. Belated welcome to HisPrincessHope!**

Merde.

Aristotle once said '_Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power and is not easy._' A priest of Eugene's acquaintance was more fond of cautioning against allowing the sun to go down on one's anger, and of the two sayings he was unsure which was the more pertinent for this particular moment.

The meeting had progressed smoothly, albeit with swiftly dwindling numbers. Augustin might not have noticed the way Les Amis halved once Grantaire had stumbled almost drunkenly from the room, but he was not quite so single minded that he hadn't seen first Joly, then Lesgle and finally Feuilly follow their friend out into the street.

If he had been, the punctuated bang of the door behind Feuilly would have drawn his attention to their suddenly empty table. Brilliant. The dwindling anger at M L'Vingt Student flared again - if briefly - for dieu's sake see how he's already causing dissension among us? It was almost enough to make Eugene want to simply ignore the afternoon's happenings. Grantaire could go hang, the rest would soon forget what had happened - as Bahorel and Courfeyrac had already seemed to - and the Cause would be a brighter and lighter thing without the weight of a cynic and a disbeliever.

Perhaps it was the clear thought _Grantaire can go hang_ that reminded him. It had been easy enough to forget broken ribs and near executions - frighteningly easy. Like he had forgotten all the laws of charity and clear thinking and logic and fact in a rush and become not much more than a force of liver and spite and gall, all the humours Joly was forever going on about wrapped into one fierce wave against one sadly less-than-prepared and rather battered old drunk.

Grantaire can go hang, eh? Well, Combeferre, he almost did, didn't he?

That particularly pertinent thought almost stopped him in the middle of his report on several of their new contacts. Some workers from the factories near the Sienne, a group of students led by a very capable and rather short-tempered man whom he so far knew only as Adrien - of which there were eight or nine; and a trio of watchmakers, all of which he needed to fill Enjolras in on so that proper communications could be set up between the factions. And for once he lost his train of thought halfway through, stumbled, recapped, lost his train of thought again and introduced M. Adrien's group three more times than completely necessary. At which point he was forced to stop and explain to Bahorel that _yes_ doctors can do basic math, and merci beaucoup for taking the time to point that out by which time tempers in general were frayed, Enjolras was running low on patience, and the meeting had to be wrapped up far too quickly to get anything more of importance done... and so that leaves us. Us with our temper, our guilt, and our realisation that we just watched a man with a lot of reasons to give up on the whole pack of us stand up and try to fight for what _he_ believes in... and helped to not only push him out the door but also kick him a few times.

Well, hell.

Which was, of course, why he was now at Enjolras' door, knocking. Confused and knocking and the meeting not forty minutes over.

"It's open," Enjolras called as he usually did, and as he usually did, Eugene opened the door and stepped inside.

He said, "It's me," and was not sure how to continue. Before he had always come with a surety of where he stood and where Enjolras stood on all their issues and arguments. God knew they had arguments. Before, at least, he'd known that Enjolras knew what he thought... or knew what he was likely to say... or knew himself what he was likely to say.

"I thought it would be," Enjolras was sitting at his table with the details for the new contacts and a map before him, obviously going over several new plans. Eugene found even trying to think about the Cause difficult. Or about how to say that he'd been a complete ass, but hey Enjolras so were you how charming that for once we managed to synchronise our moments of resembling strongly beasts of burden.

So instead he merely looked at the map a moment and said, "Mmm. Have you eaten yet?"

"Yes, nanny," Enjolras gave a sigh, and Eugene thought he could hear a certain amount of world-weary 'oh god not again' in that sigh.

Oh god, here's Combeferre again to make me study and do other ridiculous things like eat and sleep, how tedious, how boring and how gauche. Why can't he just leave me be so that I can get the important things in life done? Eugene narrowed his eyes. "Don't _call_ me that."

"All right," Enjolras looked up, startled. "I won't."

Ah good, I've got your attention, do I? Brilliant. Please do follow carefully, captain, because I'm not sure I have this all worked out myself yet so it may be a little shaky. "Thank you. All right, you know why I'm here."

"No, but I'm all ears."

No? Combeferre sat down and folded his arms. Hm. He'd thought it was obvious. One particularly large disagreement in the meeting, one particularly loud and sometimes obnoxious drunkard dismissed permanently... "Grantaire."

"I quite agree," Enjolras said startlingly, before sitting back and regarding him. "Where does he come in thinking he's suddenly on par with us?"

On... what? Eugene felt his eyebrows raise. Par? Is this a contest now? Who can be the most insanely impulsive and completely irresponsible with his own safety in the interests of the Cause? "How do you mean?"

"He consistently does nothing for the Cause, in face does much to oppose it, and now suddenly expects me to trust him as if he were once of us."

This - perhaps hypocritically - stung. Yes, stung, and yes Combeferre can be a hypocrite sometimes. I'm sure you're all very surprised. Please, save your shocked gasps for later. "It's odd, Augustin..." he said finally. "All these months that he has been coming along to our meetings a cantankerous drunk who would do very little more than try to shout over the top of your finer speeches... and I don't think I've ever seen you get quite as angry with him as you did when he was agreeing with you today."

"I was not angry," Enjolras stiffened nonetheless, glaring.

"Very well, as cruel then."

"I wasn't _cruel_ either."

Combeferre ignored the god-like overtones in Enjolras's glare now. Well, mon ami. This is what we do, isn't it? We talk together on these things until one of us concedes defeat? Well I am not ready to concede. Not after today. After today, I don't think I _can_ concede. "He wanted to help, you told him to leave and never come back. I'd call that cruel."

"It wasn't like that."

"I was there."

Enjolras raised his golden brow in part amazement, part skepticism. "You were agreeing with me."

Yes. Yes I was. "I was angry." I get angry - sometimes in the wrong way at the wrong man at the wrong time. Today, mon ami, was that wrong time and that wrong man, and we were both cruel.

"But surely you see there was sense in what I said," Enjolras was looking at him as though he had just removed support which Enjolras had thought he could count on, and this was not going anywhere towards making him receptive to what Combeferre had to say. _Had_ to say, because he was not so far enjoying the conversation and he doubted it would become any easier.

"I think we both went too far," he said carefully, trying to gather all his tact when what he particularly wanted to do was return to his study and hibernate until he could forget the look on Grantaire's face when he had been told the only thing he could do for his idol was to leave him be.

"I disagree."

"How can we claim to fight for equality if we discriminate ourselves as to whom we will allow to aid our cause? Surely the fight for freedom should be the property of all men." Combeferre found himself suddenly staring at the top of the table. Freedom. All men. Equality and brothership... what have you _done_, Eugene Combeferre?

"And it is." Enjolras gave a noisy sigh, sounding bored with the conversation already. Bored and a little betrayed that Combeferre was no longer agreeing with him. "But he has disowned himself by his beliefs and actions. He is no longer worthy to stand in defense of Liberty."

Eugene gave a snort and looked up, disgusted with himself and with Enjolras - but more with himself because he knew better. He knew putain better. "Because of that _paper?_ He was quite right. I should _hardly_ have held that against him."

"_Not_ just because of the paper," Enjolras snapped, glaring in disapproval that was normally reserrved for Royalists or drunks. "He has not improved. Combeferre, how many times are we going to have this discussion?"

A few more, comander. A few more. "I say he has improved, Augustin. I have not seen him drunk in two weeks, he's paying attention and trying to be of service." And mon ami if you knew what it took for a man to get off the booze once it has him in her grips... well, maybe you'd have a little more respect, eh? "What _more_ improvement do you want to see?"

"Eugene, you don't understand."

He frowned. Either I don't actually understand, or you just don't have a good response for my argument. "Then explain it to me."

"I have. Several times." Enjolras looked exasperated now, and that made Combeferre all the more irritable. Stop acting like I'm a child who cannot comprehend that two and two make four, Enjolras. Because you're explaining that two and two make sixty-eight.

Consequently his tone was sharper than was perhaps wise. Angry again. Is this the right man and the right reason and the right time? "Oh please. Explain to me again how throwing out a willing man who is _trying_ to change for the better does any good at all for our Cause, for ourselves, and even for him. Obviously my understanding is not what it used to be."

There was a long crackling pause, and then Enjolras raised a cool eyebrow. "No, it isn't." And looked away to stare at the wall.

And that is that. He glared at his hands for a long moment before snorting again and getting up to clear away the three cravats and two pairs of boots from the corner of the room near the bookshelf. It could use some dusting in here. Dust was bad for the respiratory system. Would never do to have a Glorious Leader with asthma or allergies. Not very god-like at all, that.

"You don't have to do that." Enjolras was still not looking at him.

"It's a mess." There's a plate of half-eaten eggs under this cravat. It looks five years old. You haven't even been _living_ here for five years.

"It's not." Enjolras turned slightly in his chair and surveyed the room calmly. "I know precisely where everything is. It only looks like a mess to you because you don't understand it."

Didn't you know, Combeferre? Four and four together make fifty-three. He gritted his teeth, replaced the cravat and then shoved his hands into his pockets. "Seems I'm not understanding a lot." Wrong or right or whatever, mon ami Enjolras the godlet... we two did a terrible thing today, and I am angry. Perhaps that is something _you_ cannot understand. Because, might I point out, that 45792.4 and 578928.82 togather is 624721.22.


	16. All Might Hear And Understand

**A/N - All I can really say to you lovely people who have not yet got replies to your reviews/PMs or seen your Christmas requests be posts is that I'm terribly sorry. I've been rushing about lately with several complicated issues to do with my new job and I've just been so dreadfully scatterbrained! I promise I'll get back to you soon, in the meantime hoping you're all having a great new year. Just a comment, I'm fascinated to see how polarised the reactions to Bahorel and Courfeyrac have been. We're quite glad to see that people are taking both sides, because we do try to show both sides, and this means we're doing our job relatively okay at developing all characters. We hope you continue on the journey with us and enjoy the updates to come as much as you've enjoyed the ones that have been.**

The facts of the matter _ought_ to speak for themselves, shouldn't they? Shouldn't it be obvious what he meant? But once again, Enjolras and Eugene had come to disagree over Grantaire. And once again Eugene just couldn't _see_. The issue was not that anti-revolutionary paper. It was the fact that Grantaire thought redemption such a slight matter. For years now he had followed them around, compromised their security, interrupted speeches, scared off more than a few recruits…and now he thinks that he can turn around and command equal attention and responsibility? That drunkard, symbol and example of all that is wrong with this world, one of _us_? He could be yet, but not without service. Not without initiation. Not without making reparation and proving that he is capable – not without the testing in fire.

Enjolras looked up at the man before him, whose face was so drawn up and whose whole air seemed so furiously, bitterly resolute that he began suddenly to feel that, perhaps, _he_ had missed something. Perhaps he had offended. Perhaps it was merely a touchy day for Eugene. Either way, there didn't seem to be much reason to doubt that Eugene was, for some reason, unhappy with _him_, Enjolras. "Is something the matter?"

"...oh no," Eugene snapped. "Nothing's the matter. I'm just at a loss as to what my usefulness is now I appear to be incapable of understanding anything."

Incapable…of understanding _anything_? What nonsense was this? This was, after all, Eugene Combeferre, who seemed often to make it his business to understand _everything_. Everything from Justice and the workings of long-extinct laws to wayward pebbles and the wispy subjects of Jehan's occasional cloudgazing. If he couldn't understand something, it was only because he didn't want to; and if that wasn't it, then it was likely that no man alive could. "But you've shown yourself to be fully capable of understanding things."

"And yet according to your good self, I am not."

"Eugene, you _are_."

"I don't understand, Augustin," Eugene said quietly.

Enjolras thought for a moment before settling on a course of action with a sigh. "Look, I'm sorry if I said something that offended you."

"It hardly matters," Eugene said, shrugging a little. "I am after all just another cog of the Cause."

"You're not. You're my second in command. I need your opinions on things." It was true. As much as he often hated to admit it, it was true. Combeferre was prone to play the voice of reason, which Enjolras did not mind being grateful for. It was only this issue of Grantaire where Enjolras could reasonably be sure that he knew better than Eugene did.

Eugene gave a small smile of the sort he usually gave whenever he recognized such an acknowledgement, but ignored the subtext by forging on with Grantaire. "…well, I've given you my opinion."

"And I've given you mine."

"Then," Eugene said with a little frown, "I suppose I have little more to say. Except that perhaps I can understand him." _Understand_? Oh yes, Eugene, you _understand_ him. Always that smug look that says "Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about and I can counter every point without even thinking, now do you have anything to say that I haven't thought of yet?" You and your understanding. You've nothing but reason, Eugene, and some things just _aren't rational_. "It must be hard to have hope in the goodness of mankind," Eugene continued, deadpan," when those you look up to have no compunctions about denying and destroying you. Yes, I think I can understand _that_ quite well."

"If you have something to say it, then come out and say it," Enjolras said coldly.

Eugene's voice was equally chilly now. "I'm sorry, was that particularly difficult to understand, Enjolras?"

_Understand_. "I merely wish that you would stop sidestepping things and taking sarcastic tones instead of confronting me directly. That's exactly what he does. That's part of what I _hate_ about him."

"So you're comparing me to him now."

"Yes. I am."

The temperature of Combeferre's tone continued to drop. "...next thing, you'll be telling me I should not come back to any more meetings _either_."

"That's not the determining factor in his case."

"Then what, pray tell, is?" Eugene said icily, folding his arms.

"The man is apathy embodied," Enjolras snapped back. "He can from time to time mean well but he has proven himself unable to sustain any meaningful effort. Do you know what we fight against, Combeferre? We fight against oppression and we also fight against the false idea that there is no point in man's trying to improve his lot. He is a cynic and of that very school of thought. His presence is a danger to the Cause and the unity of our group."

"Strange. I'm almost certain I heard him wishing to improve his lot today." Still that damn sarcastic tone, _his_ tone nearly exactly, Combeferre, are you _trying_ to offend me? "Is my hearing following the degraded path my understanding has taken, Enjolras?"

"His intentions and his actions are two very different things, Combeferre."

"What actions have been particularly scandalous lately?"

"There has been nothing lately, though I have never been convinced about the arrest. However I would think it's best to wait a bit and see if the improving trend you allege will actually continue. Don't you agree?" Enjolras said.

"... exactly how do you expect him to continue to improve if you will not encourage him?" Combeferre said coldly.

"If he wishes to improve he will. No one else has required my encouragement."

"No one else has required your discouragement either."

"I would leave him perfectly alone if he didn't antagonize me."

"He didn't do a damn thing to you."

_Enough_. "I believe we differ there."

Eugene continued to look back icily over the top of his glasses. "Obviously. To me it looked merely like a wounded, sick man being bullied."

"You've never had an issue with me like this before." And really, what if he did. Combeferre was nothing. A cog in the Deists' Machine-Universe, which Joly and Jehan like to debate when they're drunk. That's what we all are - nothing. Blind servants of Liberty. We have no mercy, and likewise no compassion.

"I've never seen you do something like _that_ before."

"I've given you my reasons," Enjolras said calmly.

"I do not think they were adequate," Combeferre said challengingly.

"They are as given and there they stand."

"Are you willing to even consider that you might have been wrong?"

"Yes. I am."

Eugene grew quiet. "I think you might have _broken_ him."

As if he were not broken and unfit already? "I am willing to live with that chance."

Combeferre snapped suddenly to attention. "_Enjolras_!"

"I don't see your problem," Enjolras said, looking him over coldly.

"That's quite obvious," Combeferre said, seething. "I don't think I have anything more to say to you on the matter. Good day."

Enjolras watched him go in silence before just as silently returning to his lists and maps and really, above all to the sublimity of the Abstract and Ideal, with which Combeferre, as now, so often seemed to place himself at odds."


	17. Just Outside That Secret Orchard

**A/N - Rather short chapter this time, sorry dears! Will update again soon. We've almost finished writing this arc, which means Arc 5 will be started soon!**

Maurice didn't see how this could be happening. It was just…fantastic. Part of him said that it was silly to call _this_ fantastic after everything else that had been happening, but after a while if you didn't want to go mad you had to start thinking of things in a _relative_ way, which he had to admit he was bad at, which was possibly why so many people called him mad in that infuriatingly condescending and smiling way. Maybe run-on sentences were a part of that too but he couldn't _help_ not being able to articulate well, _especially_ when everything was so up-in-the-air like this and really when you thought about it where _was_ the difference between being slightly mad and having a physical disease, which he realized now with horror he hadn't even considered in a few weeks, and what if something had gone wrong _again_ and "Perceval, are you _sure_ you're all right?"

"Yes. I'm fine," Perceval kept saying back in the most strained, barely controlled way, which really Maurice couldn't blame him for. It was all horrible, though and he should _not_ have come and really it was their fault for not…well…the truth was that Grantaire and Scaramouche were really both unswayable. And perhaps he really did need to calm down a bit, but Alexandre and _Daniel_ were both still gone and he'd gone and left them alone with Courfeyrac and _Bahorel_ and god if that didn't look bad for both of them – Alexandre and Daniel that was not Bahorel and de Courfey-

The door opened and there they were (that is to say Daniel and – oh, never mind) and they _looked_ unhurt, but that was never a reliable indication _really_. "What happened? How did it go?" he demanded, jumping up.

Daniel cast a glance at Perceval before growling, "Come into the kitchen."

Oh god. This couldn't be good. Maurice left Perceval settled on the couch and followed Daniel and Alexandre, all grim-faced and looking very much like Something Awful Had Just Happened, into the kitchen.

"You tell him, Alexandre," Daniel said over the noise he was making slamming things around in the process of – making coffee, it looked like. Second cabinet, cher. I moved it last night to make room for that extra cup you thought we should get in case of Perceval…

"Well, we didn't get them to admit what their problem was," Alexandre said, almost carefully, as if there was something he wasn't quite sure he should admit to.

"Oh no," Daniel cut in, and Maurice could see that he was really truly very angry, the kind of angry that didn't happen often at all, recently only when Bahorel did stupid things involving his friends that ended in fighting and oooooooohhh….Maurice was _not _reassured at all. "They said a _lot_ but they never quite admitted _that_."

Feuilly continued on diplomatically, as if he hadn't even noticed how angry Daniel was, or maybe more as if he were trying to counteract it. Which was nice of him, but that sort of thing didn't work with Daniel, it just made him angrier that you weren't even upset by whatever-awful-was-angering-him. "They had a lot of things to say about us and," he lowered his voice a little, "about Perceval in there...none of them any good, of course."

Maurice jumped as Daniel slammed down two cups in front of them, coffee sloshing over the side of one and a dangerous-looking chip coming off the handle of the other. "Dieu, yes. You should have _heard_ what they said about Perceval. Dam' fool of a Bahorel's lucky I didn't knock his head off his dam' shoulders."

That almost _confirmed_ it, oh _dieu - _"Daniel - you didn't get in a _fight_ did you? Again? Did he hit you back? Are you all right?"

Daniel stopped acting Very Angry long enough to look sheepish and turn a bit red. "...um... yeah... kind of got in... yeah."

"_Daniel!_" Maurice yelped. Admitted, Perceval was very important. Friend's a friend and all that – but you're not – _neither _of you are fighters for that matter, and here _I_ was sitting here worried to death this whole time and you get into a fight with Dominic Bahorel, he who breaks heads and let's not pretend Courfeyrac's all that much better all right especially against _Feuilly_? If we're _going_ to get into these things, can't we at least be sensible about them? But, then again, Maurice couldn't remember the last time _anything _had been sensible…


	18. Now Listen Very Attentively

**A/N - Well dears! We're about 6 chapters or so from the end of this arc now, and it's been oddly one of the most controversial storylines so far in Capitain Scaramouche. As we're still finishing writing the last chapter and the epilogue, updates will quite likely slow to once a week to give us a chance to catch up on ourselves for Arc 5 before we have to start posting that. Thank you to everyone who reviews, we love having you and we appreciate your support! xxx**

_I am sent with broom before to sweep the dust before the door._

Donkeys. Anglaise... all 16th century nonsense, isn't it mes amis? Of course it is. He'd never much liked the 'Dream' of M. Shakespeare. Fees, in all their capricious glory confined by a few bits of rhyme on a stage of Englishmen and fools? But that, honestly, wasn't what he disliked about it. Not the stain-glass moonshine that swept through the glass that Oberon and Titania together held up to the eyes of the audience, not for the piquant fools, draped over bits of foliage as they tried to escape their dull humdrumity of normal bread and milk and merci beaucoup for the coffee maman lives with a bit of acting. No. Heaven forbid he should look down his nose at some other clown or fool hoping to escape the reality of the world - and oui it's a harsh reality, Enjolras. Think I never listen to you?

Dieu - would that you'd listen to me sometimes. I don't even have to speak for you to hear it. The creak of the shoes - loud and cracked that they are, poor enfants... the shuffling of my feet, hey - look there, _listen_ there Apollo. Can't you hear it in the crackling threads of poverty that the greyest lady of all Paris has woven around me? You speak of harsh times, of cold times and empty times, of the ravening hunger that roams the belly like one of the venerated parents of Remus or Romulus themselves, well _listen_. Listen, for god's sake... why do you think some of us lose hope?

Ah, but then what are we saying my darlings. We presume to believe that there's a place for us to speak - us to be heard when we're the caterwauling of drunks at their bridal chamber or the funeral hymn at their christening... the death of life when all they want is to live, no. No, we learn our place, Grantaire - Scaramouche and all. Fools and clowns and blind beggars.

But back to the subject, no. No it had never been the fancy that had annoyed him about M. William's (and don't the Anglaise have odd first names? Who would call a poor benighted child something like James? Or Harold? Or - forbid it please dear father whom I'm not supposed to believe in being a good cynic and all considered but I do - _Archibald?_) fiction. It had been the way things turned at the end. Not a item left out of place, not a person unaccounted for, all happy as pretty damned little singing gooey larks. One girl left pat with the homme she'd wanted and who wanted her, the other in the arms of the connard who dropped her for her best friend and only came back to her because a few sprites took it into their heads to bless instead of curse... fairies reunited and king and queen showering blessings on the fools. Nothing in life ended like that, nothing. And while theatre was an escape from that particular truth - _dieu_, it's not meant to give all the glory to a pack of malicious little creatures who'll spit on you and turn you older than a house soon as look at you! Give the people something they can half-believe in... a little laughter and a little sorrow, love and broken hearts and the one fellow off on the outside of the wedding feast because he doesn't belong... can't belong... shouldn't have ever tried.

Also, if he had to admit it, which let's be frank my darlings why not? We're alone right now and only the bits of crockery on the mantle, Maurice's I'm-only-a-medical-student-but-that-doesn't-mean-I-can't-have-shiny-things-to-play-with-like-the-big-boys surgical instruments and the chaise - Mlle Chaise, pardon, to listen. Helena, oui? Gawky, tall kid who follows the ange who despises her? He'd read the play again in a fit of boredom, trapped inside his apartment by a cold that had latched onto his throat and chest with pitchforks and demons and choirs of particularly bad Georgian chants. It had been a month or so after he'd crashed like a particularly nasty sort of meteor on the sainted Pantheon that surrounded Apollo with their glorious shining faces of hope, love, patriotism, and really idiotic plans which were going to get them killed one of these days, and apart from the romantic aspect the ideal of the unwanted soul pursuing the idol who despised...

It hit a little close to home, that did.

And damn Shakespeare had gone and made it damn romantic too.

Fool of a man. Don't you know we're not meant to have love, us unwanted souls? We're meant to sweep the cobwebs, to dance at the feast and slip away on the chimes of a midnight bell... no, that was never a part he was meant to play. Not love, but the Puck and the Scaramouche and the Sganarelle.

Oddly fitting that. His ribs hurt... dieu did they hurt, and more than that hurt seeing Daniel and Alexandre so grim - Maurice so worried, and them leaving him behind like poor p'tite Perceval who mustn't listen while the adults talk. What is it then, mes amis? _Gentles, do not reprehend; if you pardon, we will mend. And as I am an honest Puck, if we have unearned luck... _what then? You're not thinking with your head, Mlle Chaise. It's obvious what then. _Give your hands, if we be friends, and Robin will restore amends._

Would be nice if we could.

Perceval was a man of curiosity and whimsy, neatly mixed together like heady vapours until he thought himself more cat than man and more clown than cat. After ten minutes of studious consideration of the parts of Helena and Puck and all the rest of Shakespeare's mad band, he picked himself up off the sofa and ignored the delightful little symphony of pain that caused as well as he could. It was five steps, two chairs and three separate places where he could lean on the wall before he was close enough to the kitchen to hear what was being said.

Alexandre was speaking, in a strangely irritated and strained sort of voice. "There wasn't any other way to settle it. We're fine. Really."

"He tried to hit me back, but he missed," Daniel added helpfully and dear _dieu_. There'd been fighting. Fighting with Bahorel and Courfeyrac and what for? For him? Dieu they could have been damn hurt and then it would have been his fault... and...

"Same," Alexandre said.

Maurice sounded as though he was ready to punch someone himself. "He had _better_ have missed. Stupid... gah..."

"We really had to." Daniel's voice lowered to a bass sort of growl, more fierce than Perceval had ever heard it before. And what for? For an old has-been drunk not quite worth twenty sous? "...no one says that about one of my friends."

That's not how it's supposed to _be_. No, ami. No. You don't get in danger because of me anymore, see? I'm not drinking anymore, and I'm not going to walk into any more of Pillon's stupid traps, and you don't go getting into anymore danger, all right? Because it's not life and death so you don't have to. You don't.

"Couldn't just let them get _away_ with it..." Alexandre was saying, and that doesn't make me want to know what it was they exactly _said_ or anything, does it ami? Perceval raised an eyebrow at the kitchen door in some irritation.

Harlequin - Maurice, rather - was as always being the blessed voice of reason. "But you didn't have to go and get in a fight!"

Thank you. Glad _someone_ knows that much.

"Yeah..." Daniel said then in a strangely firm voice, not at all the sort he usually used around cher twin. "Yeah we had to. Bad enough when they said he was a useless sot..."

Oh god. Oh god, I _don't_ want to hear this. Grantaire pushed at the wall, but his arms and ribs both seemed to be in agreement that staying put was exactly what _they_ wanted to do and he couldn't move.

Oh _dieu_, please. Not again.

But Alexandre continued Daniel's thought mercilessly through to the coup de grace at the end. Au'voir to the fox, the red-tailed M. Reynard, to Grantaire and friendship and all things else that we care about, eh? "And well... once Luc said he was useless as a friend, too, that was the final straw."

There was a slight pause. Grantaire heard Alexandre encourage a silent Maurice to drink some coffee, but found himself unable to reason quite why. Huh.

Oh.

Right.

"...I really thought better of them." Daniel.

"Well so did I." Maurice.

He slid down the wall slowly and with the smallest of groans, and stared at his knees.

"I really don't want to believe it of them." Alexandre. "What could _possibly_ have motivated that?"

It happens, Feuilly. Sorry.

"Dammed if I know. Not like they would _tell_ us, is it?" L'aigle again.

Feuilly snorted. "No, not at all."

"I can't believe they made Perceval..." Grantaire, Grantaire Grantaire Grantaire. Don't be a fool, L'aigle. You'll last no longer than the rest did. You'll figure it out. "ask for his money like that. A debt's a _debt_."

Mau... M... Joly. Joly, then. "It was really just _sickening_."

Something made a weird noise, and he realised it might have been himself but couldn't bring himself to look up from his knees to find out.

"They... I just really don't know what they think he did to them." Feuilly.

"Well 'nless he murdered their grandmother or something, it's a dam' shame." L'aigle.

"It's terrible." Mau-Harle-Joly.

His ribs hurt, and he gasped a little and stared at his knees. Nothing but Grantaire from beginning to end, and he'd never wished so hard to be something else.


	19. The Pettiness Of All Our Joys

**A/N I'm sorry this update is so short! I'd update twice, but we're still behind on our writing schedule and I really can't. Apologies to those readers who haven't got their Christmas requests yet! I'm working on them! **

This was more than terrible, more than fantastic; it was cruel, to see friend turning on friend like this – that was all Alexandre Feuilly had left to say at this point. "It's…" Something on the edge of his hearing shifted. "Did you hear something?"

"Apart from my loudly rumbling stomach?" Daniel said, apparently relaxed enough to joke a little.

"Was that it?" Feuilly said doubtfully. "It didn't sound like it."

"Cher, _eat_ something," Maurice interjected. Of course, he'd his twin to worry about him.

"I didn't hear anything…" L'Aigle said, getting up to find something. "And all right, but you have some too."

Alexandre frowned a little. "Huh. Maybe I'm just getting para-" …there it was again, not a sound he could define, but _something_. "All right, I definitely heard something."

Daniel set a plate with a few slices of bread down on the table, grinning. "Did you say _getting_ paranoid?"

"Oh, hush," he said, just to show that he _could_ take the occasional joke.

"It's probably nothing," Maurice said, reluctantly nibbling.

"...well," Daniel suggested as he tore into his own slice, "we might be being overrun with tiny little mice dressed as Scaramouche looking to free our cheese." The thought made Maurice chuckle a little, but Alexandre only half-heard it over another sudden noise from the other room.

"Whatever it was, I'm at least going to go check on Perceval." He got up and had just closed the door to the kitchen again when…well, there was Perceval all right. Barely able to keep himself propped against the wall, and staring at his knees with something like pain and something like shame on his face. Alexandre knew enough that that look meant the kindest course was to pretend nothing at all was wrong. "Need a hand back to the couch, ami?" he said quietly.

"Please," Perceval said with a small groan. He was still heavy, and the going was still slow, and they were both out of breath by the time they made it back over, only enough to allow for a brief exchange of "thanks" and "don't mention it", without eye contact because there were things no one should intrude on.

"What was it?" Daniel asked, glancing up from some earnest discussion as he reentered.

"It was Perceval getting up and listening to us," Alexandre said quietly, shutting the door again grimly.

"…dear _Dieu_," Daniel said, looking stricken. Maurice looked just as worried. "Was he…upset?"

No way around _this_. "He looked pretty upset, yeah..."

"Merde," Daniel said more quietly, drawing a nod from Alexandre

"Should we go talk to him?" Maurice suggested over his coffee. It would take the kind of delicate hand Alexandre wasn't sure they had, but…it might help. And they _did_ know Perceval better.

They certainly couldn't leave him as he was.


	20. Merry Brilliant Friends

**A/N - Dear all. Yes, we are updating only once a week now, my apologies. With any luck this will change back again - but for now we're on a bit of a hiatus anyway as both of us have a lot of pressure going on in our RL. This means that the new Arc's chapters aren't being started yet which may result in something of a slow kick off to that when it comes around. Thank you to all for your continued support! And welcome to Feuilly as a newer reviewer here. Hope you're all well! **

Suddenly all the anger and the tightness in his chest that had been building and building until he felt like he wanted to yell and scream and punch Dominic again and almost _shake_ Joli until he could see _what_ it had been like, that way they'd been acting like almost Perceval was worse than just not existing, like he'd gone and done something so terrible that no person would want to ever like him again - more than that. They'd been acting exactly like Perceval always looked a little bit, in his slightly-but-not-cynical enough way with his bit of a smile and half-full glass of wine - like he was scared people would act eventually if he gave them enough time. That was the truth of it. They were acting like he didn't count as a friend, like he wasn't worth caring about and that made Daniel worse than angry.

But... _Dieu..._ oh dieu, he'd listened. He'd been there listening and he'd heard what they said and _really_ he hadn't meant for Perceval to hear that, not at all. It wasn't hard to see, not even with the masks Perceval liked to keep on so carefully, that he deep down cherished those bits of friendship he had and having two friends say such horrible things about him would hurt the man behind the mask behind the mask that was Scaramouche. Not the rather out-of-practice cynic, nor the heroic martyr, but the slightly rusty and really-a-bit-all-patched and worn person called Perceval right behind all the layers.

And Daniel didn't like the idea of that.

They had to do something, they couldn't just leave him in there thinking they didn't want to talk to him because knowing Perceval that's _just_ what he would think because Perceval was _good_ at thinking things like that and they were going to have to break the habit. Maybe they could carry around lumps of sugar and give him one every time he used their first names or looked as though he trusted them or something.

"I think he'd probably take it harder if we didn't," he said in response to Maurice's question. "He's got enough friends ignoring him right now, I'd say." Can we call them friends, amis? When they'd do _that_ to him?

Either way, Alexandre was in agreement. He gave a firm sort of nod, again with that rather wonderful and strange way of his which stamped whatever had happened with the Feuilly Stamp Of 'This Makes Sense Even If It Doesn't Seem To'. "Let's, then."

He got up. Right. Let's. Action. That's good, isn't it Joli? It's good that we're doing something... oh... oops, those are crumbs on the floor. I'll get those later, cher. I really will. "Oh... Joli cher..." he knew he'd forgotten something. "Just so you know. We're a _League_."

"A _League_?" Maurice echoed, getting up himself and seeming to take no notice of the crumbs on the floor.

"Definitely."

"Daniel came up with it," Alexandre added. "I think it sounds perfect."

Ami... really. He couldn't help grinning again. Alexandre somehow managed to make him feel like he Had Always Made Sense And Would Always Make Sense And If No One Else Can See It Well That's Their Problem So Sucks To Them. "Well... Perceval inspired me." And he had. Perceval sitting there in the middle of the meeting and looking at them all and calling them his own 'league', as though just by knowing them he'd somehow made a huge leap forwards.

Strange how Perceval could be so mistrustful and so optimistic about people all at once. Strange how inspiring that was.

"We'll have to tell him that," Maurice said quietly, and he was smiling a little in a way that really made Daniel think that maybe he too thought Perceval was odd and strange and bewildering - but not in a bad way.

They walked into the living area, it seeming like a much shorter distance than usual when what they saw as soon as they came through the kitchen door was Perceval on the couch with a look all tired and dead and grim and sad on his face. Like maybe not just his ribs were broken - and _dear_. Dear _dear_, how often could the man's heart be cracked before it would stop sticking back together again?

And... oh _dear_, cher... you haven't finished your coffee. Please, _cher_. You're going to need it. Do finish it quickly and you know we wouldn't get you to drink it if you didn't really need to drink it because I don't think Alexandre and I can fix Perceval without you to help...

There was a terrible awkward silence which for a moment or two he almost thought was his fault because it felt exactly as though something had been smashed and that was usually his fault, wasn't it? They all stood very awkwardly around and Perceval glanced at them all briefly, face immobile and tight, before looking back up at the ceiling.

"So..." Alexandre started carefully, being the diplomatist of the group and _dieu_ what does that say about the rest of us? "We wanted to talk about what happened after you and Maurice left."

There was a slight movement from Perceval. Something like a movement that was thinking about growing up one day to become a nod.

Oh. Daniel shifted his feet around a bit and felt like he was towering over Perceval who didn't look really like he wanted to be towered over, so he sat on the foot of the sofa and felt uncomfortable so he was probably _looking_ uncomfortable... oh _Perceval_ stop _looking_ like that. They're not much friends if they treat you like that anyway. "...think you should know."

The others also rearranged themselves, looking like they'd just realised that perhaps standing about and staring down at their friend wasn't much of the best way to act right now. Maurice sat on the floor and dutifully drank some of his coffee with a world-weary '_I know you all want me to, but I'm going to regret it'_ look, while Alexandre leaned against a wall as he usually did and looked just as thoughtful as even he could look which was very very thoughtful.

"To be brief about it, things did come to blows over them saying some things we didn't like at all." He was being tactful again. Daniel wasn't sure tact was merited for de Courfeyrac and Bahorel - but supposed it was required for Perceval's sake.

Who just gave that sort of aspiring little movement of a nod again and said flatly, "...so I gathered. Courfeyrac never did pay much attention when I told him to shield his head."

At that, Alexandre seemed to have nothing more to say, and instead looked down at his hands which had so recently been proving Perceval's point on de Courfeyrac's chin. The thing was that they'd become Perceval's friends so recently that it was easy sometimes to forget how long he'd known Bahorel and de Courfeyrac... how much they'd done with and been _to_ each other...

Which of course made their actions now unforgivable. And he felt a rush of anger again just thinking about it.

"There's no truth in what they said, Perceval," he said out loud, anger making his voice low and rumbly.

Maurice nodded. "None at all."

The nod that thought it could be a nod become two blinks, and Perceval was still staring up at the ceiling. "...well...perhaps that's so. And then again, perhaps that's not."

"No, it most definitely _is_," Alexandre thankfully said quickly before Daniel could start explaining the sugar cube system and how far off Perceval was from getting even one and how much better it would be for everyone if he just let them give him cavities and stayed away from idiots who ignored his broken ribs.

"Yeah, well... thank you... Alexandre," Perceval said in a voice that made Daniel think that perhaps they were all very lucky indeed that he wasn't just calling them by their last names again. "I do _appreciate_ it. But th' fact is that they _have_ known me for nearly two years now, while we've been friends less'n a week. Seems they _might_ be more experienced."

And that was that. He said it like he was rattling off a list of faults on a slightly broken watch he was trying to sell but didn't expect anyone to buy. Daniel gave the room in general a worried look and wished for once in his life that he could fix something instead of break it.


	21. As Calm, As Clear Headed As Any Man

**A/N I do apologise for the late update! I forgot last night, so to make up for that here are two chapters. xxx  
**

_Come on, Maurice, there has to be something you can do here. Surely...some sort of chance to make yourself _actually_ useful_. "They're just angry," he found himself saying to Perceval, and only half believing that it was a decent explanation.

"Not that they've any right to be," Daniel said quickly – thank you ami for catching that.

"I don't know what's got to them," Alexandre added. Maurice was still slightly surprised by the attitude they had all begun to take concerning Feuilly, and the attitude Feuilly had begun to take concerning all of them. Almost like there was an understanding there, that had probably been made about the time he stepped up to defend Perceval – yes, that was it. The thought "any friend of Perceval's is a friend of ours" was only half through his head when he realized how really sad it was that their Scaramouche couldn't _see_ how he was pulling everyone together. It was funny how things were when you'd had a bit of coffee and could focus.

Perceval sighed. "No doubt they've been listening to Enjolras."

"And what if they have?" slipped out of Maurice's mouth – oh, well, so what if they _had._

"In a way they're quite right," Perceval said, looking back at Maurice with a very pointed sort of melancholy that nearly bordered on…Perceval…don't give me that look… "I... do not trust easily."

Alexandre shrugged his shoulders a little. "Neither do I, but neither they nor you seem to take issue with me."

Perceval shifted uncomfortably and took the subject of the conversation with him. "...you know that paper that Enjolras was irate with me about?"

"Yeah…?" Maurice remembered it now. It seemed horribly long ago. Daniel winced beside him.

Grantaire fidgeted weakly with a loose thread on his waistcoat before continuing, quietly. "That year I came top in all my classes. I was twenty. The next year I dropped out of school and joined a law firm as an assistant." Maurice glanced around the room to see if his companions had any more hint of where Perceval was going with this than he had; Daniel's face was equally blank, but Alexandre, for all his usual unreadability, had a look of understanding. "...I dropped out because my father couldn't afford to send me," Perceval said flatly, brokenly, like he was reciting from rote. "He never forgave me that. He never talked to me again, and after my mother's death I stopped wanting him to. My brothers took my place at university, my best friend took my girl."

Sounds were everywhere in the silence that followed, but they were sounds from the street, from the halls upstairs. Maurice was almost scared to breathe in case Perceval might crumble to pieces. "I've never told anyone that," he said from his place on the couch. "Those two were the first friends I'd had since then. Not that I called them friends... but..." he glanced up at the men around him and snorted a little in that Scaramouchean Let's-Clear-The-Air-And-Get-Back-To-Talking-Sense way. "...I'm sorry. Talking too much. Not like me."

"No, it's…fine."

"Glad you told us, ami."

"Yes, really."

Perceval only shook his head at them and rubbed his eyes. "...Anyway. Another fine mess of another fine friendship."

"...Perceval, they'll come around," Daniel said earnestly. "Eventually. I may have to bang their heads together until they do, but…they will." Alexandre nodded along and Maurice shot Daniel a look of _don't you dare get into any more fights without me there_ that unfortunately went unseen.

Someone knocked at the door and Maurice nearly jumped up from the shock. It could be anyone – maybe they hadn't shaken off the police after all – was he overreacting?

"Who in Hades could that be?" Daniel said, looking glad for the distraction.

"…if it's Enjolras, _please_ tell him to go away," Perceval said weakly from the couch.

Maurice got up and started going to the door. He might as well face whoever-it-was. "_Gladly_."

Daniel joined him with a noise of agreement. "Can I also tell him to stick it up his…" he turned a little red and Alexandre mad e a noise that might have been laughter. Maurice couldn't really tell.

"_Daniel_!"

Daniel answered Perceval's protest with a laugh. "Come on, Joli. You too, Alexandre?"

"Oh, sure." He got up and joined them, but Maurice mentally noted that he needed to stop looking surprised at invitations like this. He was really as bad as Perceval.

Whoever was at the door knocked again impatiently. Joly tried not to look too worried. After all, surely after all this, things could only get better.


	22. Foolish and Prejudiced As The Republican

**A/N And here's the other one. Enjoy!  
**

There was probably a pithy quotation to sum up the current situation, but he honestly couldn't be bothered to figure out what that might or might not be. Aristotle, Socrates, Couthon, St Just - any of them. Today did not seem to be a day for complex mathematics or for the reciting of ancient wisdom. Instead today was a day for mistakes. Big, serious mistakes.

Perhaps one of these mistakes was standing outside Maurice Joly and Daniel Lesgle's apartment and knocking. Loudly. Again.

Combeferre leaned his head against the doorframe and considered the possibilities. After all, Grantaire was a sensible man. He would hardly get angry about something as childish and silly as what had happened in the meeting. Well maybe he might get angry, but he wouldn't be likely to stay angry. He was used to things like this, right? It can't really have hurt his feelings.

He had told himself these things all the way home, before realising he really should check that Grantaire hadn't done himself any permanent damage. So now he was here, where Grantaire would no doubt be with his new friends and his newfound and strangely unsuitable purpose. It wasn't that Combeferre doubted Grantaire's ability. The man was intelligent enough - as indeed his academic achievements proves - and certainly seemed to have unsuspected depths to his talents. Every man had potential, Eugene held this truth as firmly as he held to the belief that the future would come one day and be better. Not perhaps brilliant and wonderful and perfect, could humanity ever stand perfection in their current state? But better. People would understand the needs of the poor, children would not live on the street, education would be offered to all and there would be an equality of souls accepted by the logical minds.

Yes, all men had potential. But when one looked at the cynical, time-beaten and alcohol-drenched skin that hung on Perceval Grantaire, when one looked into his eyes and saw the dead hopes and dreams that were still hung like corpses of birds in the windows of his mind - it was impossible to reconcile this man with the potential and genius that was Scaramouche. Scaramouche, a figure that seemed to spring from a fresh, amused brain that saw a problem and only wanted to fix it. Not to rail at the world for its unfairness, not to escape life in the bottom of a bottle, but to act.

It was this force of action that seemed so far from the wasted potential that was Grantaire. Eugene couldn't understand it. Understand. Hm.

"...Oh. Combeferre," the door had opened while he had been thinking as sometimes happened, and Joly, Lesgle and Feuilly were all standing there and looking at him. Lesgle in particular seemed strangely annoyed - an out of character expression for his usually friendly face.

It struck Combeferre that perhaps these men who had taken a side with Grantaire to the extent of leaving the meeting when he was expelled, might also be somewhat annoyed with him for the part _he_ had played in this morning's debacle, and felt embarrassed. "...Can I come in, Joly?"

"I don't see why not...?" Joly glanced at Lesgle to confirm his decision, the twinness of their relationship a welcome moment of normalcy in the madness that seemed to have encompassed Les Amis.

"Oh fine," Lesgle said rather brusquely. "Just make it quick, eh? Our home is not a roadside tavern."

It might have been slightly more efficient to simply nail **you are not welcome here** to his forehead, but they seemed to be doing such a splendid job of saving nails and paper, that Combeferre decided not to mention it and instead stepped inside. Yes I can be observant of things not related to laundry, schoolwork or the revolution. Surprising, I know. Lesgle shut the door behind him with a bang.

What was it with Grantaire's friends and their need to express their feelings through slamming doors?

Well. He straightened and raised an eyebrow, trying to smile with relative good-humour. "So... how's our Vingt Student? "

The reactionwas really quite startling. If he hadn't been the subject, he would have been tempted to attempt to analyse it. Feuilly suddenly went from being relatively non-comittal to looking positively murderous - like he might at any moment leap at Eugene and attempt to strangle him. Lesgle - _Lesgle, mind_ - growled. Actually growled, with his fists clenched tight enough to be a threat, and _Joly_ suddenly came to an abrupt attention and glared with considerable force at Combeferre as if to say '_I may be small but by God i'll best you, M'sieur!_'.

Perhaps the most startling thing of all was that there seemed to be no particular reason for the reaction. Combeferre stood at a loss, openening and closing his mouth in shock.

"Care to repeat what you just said?" Feuilly said rather bitingly.

Combeferre wasn't used to being bitten at by Feuilly. They usually got on quite well. "I asked..." he paused to look around them and found that no, it hadn't been a hallucintation brought on by stress or too much Legal studies, they really _did_ look that angry. "...how Grantaire is?" Good lord, what in heaven's name is so strange about _that_ question?

Lesgle glared so hard that his head looked like a neatly furrowed piece of land. "It didn't _sound_ like that."

"No it didn't," Joly said.

"Not at all," Feuilly added seamlessly. As though they rehearsed this talking in one big long sentence as a group practise while not around anyone else so as to get it working just right.

Apparently they disapproved of something particular he had said. For dieu's sake he did not have time to play guessing games! This was beginning to border on childish. "Very well. I said 'how is our Vingt Student?' but I really don't see..."

Whatever it was he didn't see, they didn't seem to care.

"That's what I _thought_ you said," Feuilly drawled.

Lesgle nodded shortly. "You know, Alexandre, so did _I._"

"I wasn't sure at first," Joly said. "But yes, that's definitely it."

That particular act, mes amis, is getting old. He raised his eyebrows. "...are you all going to ask me to repeat everything I say? Because that could get tedious."

"Not everything," Joly said. "We just wanted to make sure you actually said that."

"Wouldn't do for us to do anything and then find out later you meant something different," Feuilly said.

"Would be terribly sad, that," Lesgle said.

Were they trying to be threatening? Combeferre blinked. Dear god, they were. They were really trying to be threatening. More specifically, they were trying to threaten him. Combeferre. Their comrade in arms, so to speak. Over a _name_. For a _cynic_. One who wouldn't _give a damn_. "Right... well... now that you've assured yourselves of that face, would you _mind_ letting me past? I'd quite like to _talk_ to the Vingt Sutdent in question."

"The 'Vingt Student'?" Feuilly asked in the same drawl which by the way did not become him in the least. "Really?"

"That." Combeferre said acidically. "Is the one. Do you need that clarified too?"

Feuilly shook his head. "No, _quite_ clear."

"Right..." dear Dieu, they were annoying. "Mind getting out of my _way_ then?"

"Why?" Joly was the one most blicking his way, and looking decidedly more laconic than Joly had ever _ever_ shown any indication of looking before.

"Don't play the fool, Joly. I don't have time." Combeferre ignored the furious look Lesgle shot him at that. If he was going to be glared at, at least he would know _why_.

"There's only one fool here, Combeferre," Joly said firmly and clearly, tensing up a bit all over. "And it's not me."

He couldn't help a snort. "Oh really? Look, if you've all quite finished behaving like children, I have something important to say to Grantaire _before_ the turn of the next century!"

To his great annoyance, Lesgle simply turned to Feuilly. "Did he just call us children, Alexandre?"

"If I wasn't too busy being childish to hear correctly, he did."

"Well," Lesgle nodded. "He'd be the expert, I'm sure."

That's it. That is it, mes amis. If you have no respect for me and my time, for the fact that I'm here to make sure your friend hasn't gone and injured himself again, for the fact that any supplies come out of my own pocket even, then I have no respect for you. He did not approve of unnescesary violence, of pushing or shoving and attempting to assert domination over fellow human beings, but for once he felt angry enough to ignore this cumpunction and try to shove by Joly and Feuilly.

Joly - beyond all belief, beyond all expectation, threw out a fist and punched him in the chest. It wasn't a hard punch, but there was force behind it. Momentum. Cause and effect. His energy twisted on itself and joined with Joly's force to land him unceremoniously, surprised and breathless and taken aback ... _on_ this back. Looking up at three very unfriendly faces.

And Bahorel says that science cannot be applied in the practicalities of daily life.


	23. Break Off Diplomatic Relations

Oh. Oh my god. Oh my god oh my god oh good Dieu oh god. Maurice hadn't meant to hit Combeferre. Not even push him back. Just resist because god knows Perceval didn't need to see him when he was being stupid like this, just resist a little…but there he was on the floor now, looking like he was going to jump right up and hit him back, except that Daniel was right there blocking him and every bit as angry…

"You had all better have a _putain_ good reason for this," Combeferre cursed from the floor angrily.

"Oh, we do," Alexandre said, stepping forward to match Daniel's position beside Maurice.

Combeferre sat up a little and rubbed his shoulder, the one that must have hit the ground with the most force…Joly, this is why you think things _through_, but didn't he _deserve_ it? Anyway – rubbing his shoulder with a biting glare on his face. "Oh, do enlighten me."

"Haven't you hurt him enough today?" Feuilly said.

"…I'm not here to _hurt_ him," Combeferre replied, looking a bit taken aback that anyone would think so. In Maurice's opinion that look was totally unwarranted given Combeferre's treatment of Perceval at the meeting.

"You know," Daniel growled, "You say that…but it's a mite hard for me to believe it."

Just what I was thinking, ami. "I'd have to agree there."

Combeferre began to pick himself up off the floor, eyeing them all like a schoolteacher faced with some suddenly very troublesome children. …Maurice had to admit that maybe he tended to read too much into things like people's expressions, but there was no mistaking the condescension in Combeferre's voice. "I'm here to check on his ribs and apologise to him in case I happened to offend him today. I hardly think that merits the treatment I have been getting."

Alexandre beat them to the punch in a biting tone Maurice didn't think he'd heard from the normally stoic man before. "In case you _happened_ to offend him."

"Thanks Alexandre, I thought I was hearing things," Daniel said.

Joly nodded along. "So did I." It was nearly impossible that anyone could really be so self-righteously blind – wasn't it?

"Really now," Combeferre said somewhat uncomfortably, "Grantaire's a grown man and he's heard worse, I'm sure I said very little that he would have found offensive."

"...Combeferre, have you been spending too much time listening to Enjolras' nonsense, or is it just me?" Maurice snapped. Not this _again_, Combeferre, didn't you learn the last time? The one when you insulted us all to hell and back before you got over your prejudices enough to see sense? I see it didn't last.

Combeferre stiffened a little and turned red, like he wanted to really hit back this time, but then then a look of shame spread across his face instead.

"Now I couldn't quite decide which was _better_," Daniel said, putting an arm around Maurice's shoulder, "where you subtly indicate that Perceval doesn't have feelings to offend, or where that means you don't have to apologise for treating him like dirt."

"I think in the end they're really on the same level of callous," Alexandre said.

Combeferre went redder and tried to stammer something out that might have been trying to be an apology. "I'm…I…"

"An ass?" Daniel said with a frown.

"Rather insensitive," Maurice suggested.

"Just being cruel," Alexandre said, "and it bears saying again, an ass?"

"Yes," Combeferre said, wincing. "Yes, an ass."

"Sacre Marie, he admits it," Daniel said.

"I'm impressed," Alexandre said, not really sounding as if he were.

Combeferre's shame deepened before he spoke again. "I'm sorry. And I'd like to say that to Grantaire too, if you'll let me."

Alexandre looked to Daniel, and Daniel looked to Maurice. What? When did I become second-in-command, cher? "All right," he said reluctantly.

"Just…don't you dare call him 'Vingt' Student, do you hear me?" Daniel warned.

"Right," Combeferre said. He looked willing enough to make amends, Joly decided. What was it about Combeferre doing about-faces? Hopefully, this one would last.

"Come on, then," he said, and led them all into the living room.


	24. Yourself Win A Free Pardon

**A/N Dear all - my humblest apologies for the lack of updates. I was away on holiday and then had an epic battle getting my old documents to my new laptop, however the wait is really innexusible, and I hope you'll take these two updates as a way of apologising. I will get around to replying to your reviews soon, and thank you all so much for your continued support. I can confirm we will start the new arc soon so we shouldn't have too long between arcs this time around. Love to you all!**

They left Feuilly and Lesgle standing near the door - giving them some modicum of something like privacy as Joly drew him further into the room, to the sofa where Grantaire was laid out again, much as he had been several weeks ago. Where he had begged for release from the pain and the questions - and damn Combeferre, damn. So easy to forget what that obviously meant, isn't it?

M. Cynic Grantaire, who is the man behind all these masks you like to wear? Are you the philosopher with the dangerous pen? The cynic sunk so deep in his bottle that nothing except the most brightly burning ideals can pull him out? Or are you really deep down past the layers of absinthe and alocohol which are almost certainly destroying your liver as we speak actually this strange being of whimsy and odd bursts of bravery that calls himself Scaramouche?

Now is that really it? You have to put on a mask to become what you are beneath the mask? I wish I knew.

He also wished he could be as certain that Grantaire had not taken offense at his little tirade as he had been when he had knocked on their door. Phrases like 'surely it wasn't an unexpected reaction considering' and 'what else could he have expected' and 'he must have a thicker skin than that' supplied themselves helpfully if not particularly convincingly.

Combeferre had always held that when a person's mind began making excuses for them, there was considerable danger listening to it. More often than not it was the brain reacting in a similar way to the body's reaction to disease or infection - and a flurry of excuses meant that there was a very real problem being hidden at the core.

Today, that problem was staring at the ceiling as though he could see cracks in the plaster that were not there and never would be there in Maurice Joly's roof, and aligning said cracks with the firmament of the universe itself. As they drew closer, Grantaire tore his gaze from the invisible cracks and looked at them. "Oh, it's _Combeferre,_ not _Enjolras." _For once, there was a distinct lack of bonhomie - drunken or otherwise, and although the cynicism was palpable, it was also bleak and serious and bereft of the usual bater that made one think 'well... that's only Grantaire'.

Somehow Combeferre found it very hard to put those four words together in that sentence and have it mean anything except 'Eugene Combeferre, you are an ass' right now.

"There's not always much of a difference between the two," Joly said rather sharply.

He flinched, for once the very _thought_ of that made him feel ashamed. And it was right, dieu! He's been every bit as harsh as Enjolras - more so. He knew what Grantaire _had_ done, what he _had_ managed. He knew where those broken ribs had come from. "...Grantaire..." and he stopped, unsure how to frame an apology for this.

"...oh _yes_, Combeferre? What can I do for you?" Grantaire didn't look at him, back counting the invisible cracks in everything.

The step from cynicism to sarcasm was apparently a very very short hop, and for once it was actually intimidating. He'd never taken Grantaire's sarcasm seriously. Not even when it had been lobbed at his head with all the grace of an orangutan dancing ballet while a large hippopotamus attempted to sing the opera. Grantaire was sarcastic to everyone through the glass eye of a wine bottle and the freize of the Roman pantheon - it was almost how he showed affection in his rather backward and backhanded way, and in Combeferre's opinion, paying attention encouraged him and getting annoyed did nothing except encourage him. No one could say there was anything the least affectionate in this strange demi-heroic person's voice. "I came to apologise."

The cracks must have been forming the key to unlock the mysteries of life. Combeferre made a mental note to look into the possibility of invisible cracks, and their use as distractions for otherwise relatively sound minds. "Who to this time? Have you offended Daniel or Alexandre now?"

What? "...to you." Good lord, the man sounded serious. Serious, as in not really quite getting the point of someone saying 'I came to apologise' to _him_. The phrase directly implied...

"Me? Hah." Grantaire cut his thoughts off with a laugh that was so far from anything like a laugh that only the fact that it was spelled with the same letters could possibly categorise it as such. "Now, I wonder whatever put _me_ in the realms of 'men who merit and apology'."

This was not like Grantaire at all... in fact this was completely unlike any side of Grantaire he had ever seen. Combeferre found himself for once at a total loss, and he stammered some meaningless string of vowels and consonants, before glancing at Joly to see if he was the only one who thought this was odd. Apparently he was. Joly looked utterly unsurprised. Combeferre looked back at Grantaire, and found the invisible cracks to have lost their audience. Grantaire was now looking at him in such a distinctly firm and oddly unfriendly way that he almost wished the man _would_ look back at the ceiling.

Dieu. "Grantaire, I'm sorry." Which was completely and utterly inadequate. "I was very rude to you," understatement. "and - I have been informed and have to concede, an ass."

Yes, yes, Joly, you can stop looking so smug now.

"You mean you didn't know?" A faint ghost of a smile twitched at Grantaire's lips, though it didn't reach anywhere near his eyes.

Dammit, he was flushing again. Merde. Damn blood corpuscles. Damn them to damn hell! Biology be damned! :"...I needed to be reminded." You're making this _painful_, Grantaire. For _dieu's_ sake.

Grantaire shook his head, almost as though he'd heard that. "Now I can forgive him, Combeferre. He doesn't know. You do. Why should I forgive you?"

It wasn't even said sarcastically. Just flat. A plain question, which he didn't have an answer to. There was no logical plain reason why Grantaire should. "I don't know."

"Surely you have some idea. You, the _brilliant_ student?"

Combeferre opened his mouth, determined to end this dance right here. All right, Grantaire - you don't want to forgive me, fine. You've made it damn near impossible to even _ask_ you. _This_ 'brilliant' student isn't particularly interested in _begging_. Then he looked at Joly, who was in turn looking at their drunkard friend. There was something about that look, something hard to quantify in exact sciences. No particular measurement of two parts empathy to one part sympathy, just a strangely powerful odd look that told Combeferre to think again.

Brilliant student?

Oh.

Oh, dear. There must be something else going on here, something - _more_ than just Grantaire dropping out of school. Something that made all of what he'd said about vingt-students enough to goad the others into attacking him.

Combeferre, you fool. Never ever attempt a diagnosis without all the facts.

"I suppose," he said then, much more quietly than he had intended. "I have no reason. I'm asking you to be a bigger man than I am."

There was a pause, and then Grantaire's face softened slightly. "I suppose I could give that a try," he said with a modicum of irony, self-directed this time. "All right, Combeferre. I forgive you."

"Thank you, Grantaire." All things considered, he probably didn't deserve that forgiveness. All things _considered_, it was quite likely that however hard Grantaire had made this, he could have legitimately made it quite a bit harder. In fact... Eugene thought back to the meeting where Grantaire himself had been trying to apologise for the paper he had written more than six years ago... yes. In fact it could have been a sight harder again.

"You're welcome."

A nod, and that was it. It was over. Forgiven, forgotten, never to be refered to again. Perhaps _that_ was who Grantaire was behind the masks and masks and masks he wore. A man who forgave a bit too easily and rescued ungrateful friends from harm. And if that _was_ the man behind the masks, then perhaps such a man did not really need a mask at all.

"Thank you too, Joly," he nodded to him in turn. "I appreciate you taking the time to educate me." Even in the ways, mon ami, that you didn't know you _were_.

"It was my pleasure," Joly said with a straight face, and Grantaire smirked just a little.

Oh well. Glad to amuse, I suppose. "I'd better be off. I..." He stopped then, a slight smile on his face, frozen in mid-sentence. I need to review those notes... I should pick up that laundry... someone has to copy down the contacts Bahorel brought in... I should do those dishes... But he didn't. Not today. It was a strange, off feeling and he found himself finishing lamely "...have to be somewhere else, no doubt."

He could not have been convincing, but they allowed him to pretend. Grantaire waved and Joly showed him to the door and everyone nodded goodbye as though the world was quite normal and Grantaire had not started being serious with his sarcasm. Joly had not started punching people in the shoulder. Lesgle had not actually threatened violence, and Feuilly was not stood in the Gemini's living room protecting a drunk he had all but hated before.

And as though Combeferre was not for once completely at odds with Enjolras.


	25. Enthusiasm For The Beloved Leader

**A/N: Oh gosh. And here we are nearly at the end of this arc. And it's nearly the anniversary of our starting this tale - so happy birthday to Captain Scaramouche. More pertinently, happy birthday to insanemistosingsmore! *hugs* There is one chapter to go, and it's more of an epilogue than anything else. Many thanks for hanging in with us through this really more relationship-based arc and all our dramas. next arc is much more actiony/swashbuckling, we assure you!**

The thing was, amis and all that, about the doorway. You know we're not exactly bad off or anything, but about the doorway and the _size_ of our apartment. it's not, and I mean this respectfully Maurice cher, not complaining or anything because dieu knows it's certainly large enough for me and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, but it's _not_ that big. And the chaise isn't _that_ far from the front door where Alex and I are actually - you know - kind of standing and pretending that we can't hear everything Combeferre and Perceval are saying to each other.

Because we can. They're right over there and you know it's not all that much more private than going into the kitchen so Perceval couldn't hear us - that only worked because of the door and he heard us anyway because he is a very very bad cynic (or is it a good cynic when someone decides they want to hear the things other people who know better have decided they shouldn't hear?) so since we're over here and we don't even have a door... well. Daniel tried very hard not to listen, and succeeded just when it was really almost a pity he did, because Combeferre lowered his voice and said something which Perceval replied to with a question as to why he should forgive him - because really it was quite a good question. Perceval asked those sometimes, those really good questions that no one else asked because they looked like large hairy spiders and everyone was afraid that if you asked them they might crawl into the room and make webs and wave their hairy legs at the femmes. And once again, Combeferre was far too soft to be heard which was a pity really because Daniel himself would _really_ have liked to know mes amis _why_ Perceval should forgive anyone. Not that we're being holier-than-thou or anything, but the man was a little too free with things like forgiveness and would find his pocket empty one of these days.

Whatever it had been, Perceval seemed to accept it and stopped throwing spider-like questions out of his pockets and into the room. And then Combeferre was leaving and he pretended very hard that they hadn't just heard half of what should honestly have been a private conversation. The door that _was_ right behind them and perhaps Alexandre mon ami we could have used to create something like privacy here, closed behind Combeferre and left a silence which for a moment was too large and uncomfortable to fill.

"Dear _dieu_..." he found himself grinning a little, and Dieu this is another prayer from Daniel. You remember me, I know you do, we've talked about this before a few times and thank you for not feeling obliged to stop your ears yet. But we wouldn't say no to a little peace down here. I know Perceval is likely to take us off and get us involved with saving drowning kittens or rescuing children from burning buildings or something exactly just that level of Why-Hello-M'sieur-I-Say-I'm-A-Cynic-Until-I-See-Something-That-Needs-Fixing-And-Then-I-Forget but until he needs to pretend to be invincible again, can we have just a little peace? I really do think I am very fond of him now, and I'd rather not lose him to a punctured lung.

"That was... interesting." Alexandre had produced his coffee out of nowhere, a talent which Daniel found himself envying.

"Mmmm..." how did you do that and where did you have it, _really. _"That it was. he play nicely with Perceval, Joli?" Whcih is to say yes, Perceval, I know you can hear us and I want you to know that I care whether he did or not, and Joli could you tell me the Reason? Because he is _awful_ at this business of being a cynic around people and he may get hurt and I don't want him to be.

Joli ignored his attempt at subtlety, and cher I _know_ I'm no good at it. "Nicely? He was practically a saint."

"Really?" he raised both eyebrows. "And I _missed_ that?"

"I'm afraid so." Maurice blithely ignored the fact that they had probably heard almost everything anyway. Cher, you are really not quite yourself at the moment - I think it may have been the coffee, but if it meant Combeferre and Perceval are back on speaking terms then... I still say you shouldn't drink it anymore. You won't get any sleep tonight. And that means _I_ won't get any sleep either. And between us we'll keep Perceval awake too and he...

Shut up, Daniel. "Damn. Well, I'm going to tell Perceval the good news. Maybe if Combeferre didn't cheer him up, that will." Of course we _are_ presuming I can fix somethign again, amis, and remember how that worked out last time?

"All right," Maurice grinned in his bright way, really awfully _truly_ happy about this, so Daniel figured if Joli didn't think that he'd break Perceval again then maybe he wouldn't, and took both their arms and walked them that short step two three five eight oh hello Perceval there we are. Perceval looked at them as though seeing three men walk across a living room arm in arm was slightly too theatrical even for him.

"We have something to tell you." Daniel sat down on the foot of the couch and leaned back and gave him a look. You look a bit awkward all tucked up on our chaise against the green that Maurice says is good for his nerves. You look a bit like you're a fish landed on the sand of the beach without any water all of a sudden. I would have thought you'd be used to all this by now.

"Indeed we do," Joli added cheerfully.

Perceval smiled a little, the planes of his face arranging themselves into a sort of approximation of a bit of amusement and a little bit of fondness and a smile stretche in a curve between the two. "Oh?"

"It's good news, too," Alexandre said.

Indeed it is, ami. "_Very_ good news."

"I think I could stand some good news, amis." And then and there Daniel felt suddenly like hugging him. Yes, exactly. Amis. Not Feuilly and Lesgle and Joly, not Pan and Pedrolino and Harlequin, not even Alex and Daniel and Maurice - but _amis. _Except he couldn't remember hugging Perceval before and he was rather afraid Perceval might break. Or turn into stone. Or dust.

There was a slight pause as they all looked at each other and waited to see who would be the first to speak, and because his head was filled with images of perceval-turning-into-dust-or-maybe-a-rabbit, it took Daniel a few moments to remember that it was his idea so perhaps he was the person everyone was waiting for. "We are a..."

"A League," Maurice said rather abruptly, like he couldn't wait any longer.

The odd smile broke and cracked and Perceval was suddenly grinning, and not that grin he always had on which seemed more flat and mask-like than his other expressions and just left his eyes alive in his whole face, but a real grin. "A _leage_?"

"Yes, a league." Alexandre was nodding and Daniel found himself grinning too because it looked like this actually _did_ mean something to Perceval.

Perceval sat up a little with only a bit of a wince. "Dieu... I like the sound of that. A League. That sounds... really... _good_."

Aparently, when it came down to it, nothing was too theatrical for their Papa Scaramouche. A bit of a broken hobby-horse knight sitting there in his shirt-sleeves with his face grey and the ears of his hobby horse proken off, and Daniel had the sensation of looking at windmills and mules and a man with too many dreams in his head. Joli was grinning and had discovered his cup of coffee _no_ cher, really... you don't _need_ it and Daniel found himself flushing ebcause they were all looking his way because this great windmill was his idea.

"...you inspired it really," he said. And it's worth it to make you smile, ami. But - windmills are a bit dangerous to rush at all at once, all right? Be careful. We'll follow and I don't mind if I get hit by a windmill or two, but I'd rather Joli doesn't get too hurt, all right? Please?

"When you've got something worth living for.." Alexandre quoted quietly, and that seemed to fill the sound of windmills in his head and left something almost like the silence after a psalm.

Perceval flushed and looked pleased. "That's... _fine_..." and they all looked away at once because he looked as though if they kept looking at him he might cry. "...so. Who is to be our glorious leader?"

There was another pause as everyone looked at each other. We already _did_ this, amis. Please, it's not my turn to say what we're all thinking this time. And really, who out of us _wants_ to be the leader and charge windmills and be called 'glorious leader' like that? Anyone? because he _will_, you know he will. Enjolras can't stop him so we certainly won't be able to. They turned then, one by one, to look at Perceval - who looked back blankly as though this would be a Very Surprising Thing To be Thinking after he'd led them in and out of prison.

"Who _besides_ you?" Maurice asked, and Daniel nodded and Alexandre looked as though this was a certain fact - true as gravity and Combeferre liking books and the fact that everyone had at some point found Jehan's hair ribbons in their things.

Perceval blinked, mouth agape. "_Me_?"

"Well of course," Alexandre said.

"But..." Perceval gave a quick shake of his head, like a dog shaking off a sudden and unexpected bath. "No. No... that's ridiculous. Any of you would be better sutied."

Really? _Really_ Perceval? Me? Do you _want_ everyone to end up back in prison? No, worse. What would be worse than prison? According to Enjolras it would be living under a monarchy for another decade or two, so do you want all of France to be ruled by a despotic leader for the next hundred years? You do _realise_ I have a lot of bad luck, right? And I never ever ever lead? And wouldn't know how? "I don't think so," he said out loud, with quite a deal of restraint he thought.

Alexandre just laughed. "Not at all." Which was odd because of all of them - and no offense to his Joli, he was brilliant and wonderful but just not very much of a leader because he _worries_ and I know Perceval does too but Perceval can turn it off without coffee - Alexandre seemed the closest to a leader after Perceval.

"It just... no," Joli said firmly, and took a long swig of the cold coffee to make his point.

Perceval looked at them then for a moment, his face suddenly devoid of the harshness that had been building up. "...you... want me... _really_?"

"Really."

"Absolutely."

"No question."

They spoke together - something which had been happening recently - and Daniel thought perhaps _this_ was what a league meant. Knowing together what needed to be done or needed to be said because it weas right, and then doing or saying it.

Whatever the case Perceval Grantaire finally seemed to believe in something more than his broken-windmills, and laughed - or sobbed. The noise was somewhere between the two. "Then... I suppose I am," he said softly, and nodded at them all. "Thank you." What he was thanking them for in particular, Daniel didn't know and knew even more importantly that he didn't need to know. None of them did. Because somewhere in this world were windmills which they would tilt at together for the sake of believing in something good, and the togetherness would be as important as the windmills and the goodness.

And it would be theatrical.

God save them.


	26. At Peace With All Mankind

**A/N. Epilogue and end of Arc Four. We are planning to start Arc Five soon, so expect that to start updating in several weeks. Again, thanks to everyone who reads this story, we appreciate your support and your comments throughout! Thank you so much for staying with us throughout this longer than usual arc - no matter how late we have been with replies and chapters. All our love to you all. Thank you.**

Life was quiet. Still. Perfect. There was a map of the bone-structure of the foot on one side of his writing pad - the bones linking together in their perfect symmetrical mechanisms, ready to carry and move and shift in the fluidity that remained one of the most glorious mysteries he had yet to see. On the other side was a list of chemicals - and if he had been a man to believe in magic, this would have been his creed. Each composition of gas and liquid and solid creating alchemical sorcery together to form something new and exciting.

Healing, in the fingers of the future.

Life was perfect and free from distraction, but Combeferre found his mind distracted and the usual comfort of his study eluded him. Strange. He found himself unsurprised at the knock, and then realised that it was in fact a surprising occurence to happen.

"It's open." Whoever you are. The person came in quietly and again Combeferre was strangely unsurprised and surprised at the same intriguingly confusing time to sense familiarity behind him. He looked up and it was Enjolras, just as he had known somehow it would be.

"Oh. Hello."

"Hello," Augustin said calmly.

He found himself on his feet, ink on his fingers and feeling awkward. What he could say or think about or even frame together words in a coherent string to express his thoughts about this - vague gap between them?

"Are you well?"

Augustin, my friend, it has been a day. "I am quite well. And you?"

Enjolras looked at him in that way that seemed to quite suddenly see through the frame of bone and flesh and skin and out the other side. Sometimes that frightened Combeferre, that when Enjolras looked into a person, he looked out again and didn't pause to see what was inside. "Passably well, but that is not why I came."

"Oh?" He looked down at the table and drew with a forefinger the symbol for Barium and then Carbon before it. Carbon-Barium. CBa. aBC.

"Something has come between us, Combeferre, and it ought to be resolved." It was stated like a truth of the Cause, but he looked up and Enjolras was looking at him again and not looking through him.

That was what gave him the courage to say firmly, "I think it should, yes." And trust that Enjolras would know how.

"I'm glad you agree," he sounded faintly relieved. "Our partnership is too important to remain divided."

Combeferre nodded. "Of course I agree."

"It doesn't really matter which one of us has been in the wrong," Enjolras continued quite sincerely and managing despite the words to not sound even a little as though he were making a speech. "I apologize for being short with you."

Enjolras knew how.

"I accept. I am sorry I was... impolite." He'd had little right, after all.

Augustin nodded. "I accept your apology." They smiled at each other, aware of the fragility of the moment, and shook hands.

And now everything was not perfect but right.

After a moment he broke the tension with a smile more mischevious than relieved and fond. "Enjolras... have you been eating?"

There was a characteristic look of 'Food? How could this be important?' and Augustin shrugged. "Why does that matter?"

"Oh nothing." He smiled and shook his head. "I have a class in half an hour. Shall I come around afterwards?"

"I would be grateful if you did." Enjolras offered as though he wasn't quite certain they had completely fixed everything yet and wanted to expend all his fervour into making sure they had. "I have a new speech I would like your opinion on."

"Of course. I would be happy to."

"Thank you. I'll leave you to prepare for your class then."

"Very well." He nodded. "I'll see you afterwards."

Enjolras left and he looked down at _Carbon Barium_ and realised in this case there were legal notes which he needed to take tomorrow morning, and it was likely that Augustin had forgotten to arrange for the rent to be paid again. His world was full and noisy and messy again.

And once again he could think.


End file.
